[Sca-cooks] sauce competition

[Johnna Holloway]

I think the problem with sauces is not recipe or ingredients
but methodology and technology. Almost anyone with a stick
blender can create a reasonable sauce these days, given the right
mix,  amount of time, and monies to spend. Can they do it under pressure
to serve at an event or taste a sauce and know what it needs to make it 
work?
Can you create these sauces on the day of the event and hold them
safely for serving over an extended period of time? Cold sauces cold?
Hot sauces hot? Can someone "win" the popular vote with a bottled 
commercial sauce
that's just been doctored up for the occasion? Take a commercial fish sauce
and add the right stuff and call it Roman Apician Sauce in other 
words... Or take
a commercial marmelade and turn it into a dessert or meat sauce by adding
liquor or spirits. And if it's best taste--- then some sort of 
commercial modern
BBQ sauce may well win rather than the unusual more authentic medieval 
piper sauces.

Johnnae llyn Lewis

>The reason I am only requiring 90% period ingredients is in case they need to use some prefab sauces or purchased boullion at this point.  I suspect most entrants will be real beginners, and I don't want them discouraged.  Soo, I don't want them over-burdened by the stress of onsite cooking or shy because their work is going to be judged by traditional standards they may not have learned yet.  Beginners can understand best taste wins, and we don't have enough old-timers to be discouraged by the lack of "heavy" competition standards.
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>Samrah
>I don't expect lots of entries, but the Shire loves to cook so I am remaining optimistic.  I have been to dessert revels with dessert competitions that seem to do well (but I think it was 15+ years ago). 
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>Samrah
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