New World Foods- was Re: [Sca-cooks] Earthapples eyc

[Chris Stanifer]

--- Phlip <phlip at 99main.com> wrote:

> My thought on the topic is that we're trying to learn about the Middle Ages
> as they were when people actually lived in them. With that in mind, I've
> been experimenting over the years at Pennsic with period meso-American
> foods.


Well, if you want to get down to brass tacks, I believe the SCA 'period' is supposed to be
restricted to Western Europe.  Meso (or any other) American food would be right out.





> I have no objection to New World foods at all- love most of them- but I
> don't like to see them in places they don't belong. My SERIOUS objections
> come whe someone makes what's called "perioid" foods because they're too
> lazy to try to study what was actually done. As Adamantius has said, period
> minced beef with white bread buns, etc does not mean that hamburgers are
> period.


I take issue with this kind of thinking.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with someone trying to
have fun with period (or 'perioid' or whatever) cooking.  If the person in question were to make a
hamburger, and actually try to pass if off as 'period food', then yeah, they should be admonished.
 However, there is no harm in taking period ingredients and techniques, and creating new dishes
using them, if that's what the cook wishes to do.  This does not, in any way, shape or form,
indicate that the cook is 'lazy'.  That's a derogatory remark which I find offensive.  The entire
width and breadth of human culinary history evolved from just such an experimentation.  And, all
things related to the SCA should be enjoyable... so if a cook and his guests derive pleasure from
creating new, delicious dishes in this manner, then so be it.  Nothing to get upset about.  There
are so many people who belittle others because they did not "take the time to study what has been
done", without considering whether they did or not.  Perhaps the cook in question is the most
knowledgable person in the world in this regard...but just happens to want to experiment from time
to time as well. 

I think there are two camps in the SCA... those who believe that the only 'serious' cookery is the
ceremonial reproduction (and re-reproduction) of extant period recipes...and those who like to
experiment a little with it, as well.  I think there is plenty of room in the SCA for both camps,
but I think they need tolearn to respect one another.

 If you're going to try to break the barriers, break the
> barriers in your own abilities Medieval foods are perfectly fine as they
> are.

We'll have to disagree on that one.  I can't get my brain around this kind of thinking.  It just
doesn't make sense to me.  Maybe that's the difference between a chef and a scholar or historian,
I don't know.

William de Grandfort






=====
Every heart to love will come... but like a refugee.


		
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