[Sca-cooks] pilgrims and travel foods

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Stefan li Rous <StefanliRous at austin.rr.com>

>From: "Melanie Wilson" <MelanieWilson at dragonflight.co.uk>
>>  I came across this book on Amazon. Has anyone got it ? If so I was wondering
>>  is it a book documenting dishes used as travel food in period or a book
>  > recommending period food that will travelling to a modern medieval event ?
>
>As others have mentioned, this is more of an SCA book than one
>specifically on period travel foods. I guess I'm going to have to go
>re-look at my copy with what others have said in mind.

Caution, Stefan, caution. Because this book has gone through many 
editions, its contents vary from one edition to another and the most 
recent will be quite different from the first. So what you will find 
will depend on which edition you have.

For example, my recipe contributions are only in the most recent 
edition (and there's no reason for anyone to buy it for that - i 
think i have that recipe on my website)

>But I thought it
>was a fairly good book for those in the SCA interested in some easy to
>fix medieval foods for SCA pot lucks and such, yet not into studying
>period foods.  And I seem to remember it does have a section on various
>"buy and use" foods which beat what many folks are otherwise going to
>bring to an event.

This is, in a nut shell, the purpose of the book.

And it has, in fact, improved over the years, so that the most 
egregiously modern recipes are gone or shunted off into their own 
clearly marked chapter, and the recipes that remain are a bit more 
historically accurate.

I am not stating that the recipes are, in fact, historically 
accurate. They may or may not be.

This book is rather an SCA equivalent of one of those church lady 
cookbooks. Many different cooks donated recipes, so the historicity 
and quality vary greatly.

It is useful in the way that Stefan remarks, but is of no particular 
use to a serious historical cook.

Anahita