[Sca-cooks] following someone else's recipe

[Ruth Tannahill]

>

> >> Recipes exist as either a memory aid or a teaching tool, and if the
> >> cook who is supposed to be receiving input from the recipe is simply
> >> taking the ingredients list and throwing the ingredients together in
> >> whatever way they feel like at the spur of the moment, the results
> >> may be good, but not necessarily what the original cook intended (is
> >> it in the first edition of Pleyn Delit or maybe To The King's Taste
> >> where mortrews ends up as meatloaf?).

I've got a funny story about following a recipe exactly and not necessarily
engaging the brain. Early in my SCA career, I was teaching a class which may
or may not have been about the role of herbs and spices in period cookery.
Most of it was lecture, and I will be the first to admit, I was probably the
least qualified to teach that class than anyone there. But you know how it
is. Sometimes, you get persuaded to do something you might otherwise avoid
simply because you are willing and other people are less so. I was fairly
new to period sources, and tried someone else's redaction to make
gingerbread. I did everything the recipe said, including boiling the honey
for 15 minutes. I don't know why I didn't question the redaction. I know
what happens when you boil a sugar solution. Physics doesn't change, even if
our perception of it does. The recipe said boil for 15 minutes, stir in the
spices and bread crumbs, cool, and slice.

I didn't wind up with gingerBREAD so much as gingerBRICK. We all had a laugh
when I used it as a gavel. Now, I try to use the brain a bit more.

Berelinde