[Sca-cooks] Beverages, was Royal authenticity

[AEllin Olafs dotter]

I suspect that part of this is the driving force of need...

We don't *need* honey butter, or any other sweet spread to put on bread. 
Yes, people expect it, but they expect it because we give it to them, 
and the only way to break that cycle is at our end.

We do, however, *need* a beverage we can serve other than ale, beer, 
wine, mead, or hard cider. And there are many reasons that this is a 
real need, not just a "It would be nice if" sort of thing. I mean, we 
can just serve water, but, as was pointed out, that's not really period 
for many places either... sure, peasants might drink it, but not anyone 
who could afford anything else. And fresh cider might be served at this 
time of year, but not in March...

Even if sekanjabin was served as a beverage, it wasn't served in 
Northern Europe. So it's a stretch already, for many of our feasts. 
Lemons weren't readily available either. I've actually been wondering 
about this - not just for feast service, but for my own use, at least in 
theory - what would I (my Norwegian persona)  drink that isn't alcohol? 
Personally, I'm not authentic enough to face a cup of ale in the 
morning, though I know it was done...

AEllin

WyteRayven at aol.com wrote:

>I must have missed something somewhere....but isnt the argument " I havent found anything specifically saying that it wasnt" the same argument that has been used before with other things, and we have been told that just because you cant find anything that says it wasnt used, doesnt mean that it was.
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>In short that it isnt a good argument for saying that something is period?
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>For example I seem to remember something about honey butter. We have evidence that it was used as a medicine, but no evidence to say that it was used as a spread. But we dont have any evidence to say that it wasnt either, and it is used in modern cuisine as a spread.
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>Isnt that the same argument as is being used below?
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>Ilia
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