[Sca-cooks] florilegium confusion

[Stefan li Rous]

Finne asked:
> (Stefan, you might be best placed to answer this question :))
>
> I found this http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD/recipes-msg.html
> file in the florilegium. (I was looking for cabbage info) I'm a bit
> confused wether the recipes here are supposed to be period or not?
Not necessarily.
That file dates from earlier in the history of the Florilegium. At that 
time, there were only a few food files in the Florilegium and all of 
the recipes were in that one file. I soon decided that that wasn't 
going to work and started creating other food files and putting both 
information about the food and recipes in the same file. Someday when I 
get the time, I plan to move the recipes in the recipes-msg file to 
other files.

For various reasons you will find everything from strictly period 
recipes to modern ones in the Florilegium. Probably even more so in 
that recipes-msg file. I've learned quite a bit more about period food 
since joining this list which was in the same year that the last 
message in that file was entered (1997). Even today, I may include a 
totally modern recipe. It may help illustrate a cooking technique which 
the period recipe doesn't cover in detail. Or use a modern technique 
such a pressure canning to allow you to have a medieval meal when 
otherwise you couldn't. While I like to have references and 
bibliographic info in articles and messages, that is not always 
possible because they aren't always provided.

I leave it to the reader to use the material in the file and from other 
sources and their own knowledge to determine whether a particular 
recipe meets their standard for being period. This varies from person 
to person, and even for a single individual, depending for instance, 
upon what restrictions they might encounter because of a particular 
event or whatever.

In addition, I refuse to set myself up as the final arbiter on what is 
period and what isn't. I doubt there is anyone who is expert enough in 
the all of the wide range of topics which the Florilegium covers to do 
this. I will take pains to include multiple viewpoints, even if I 
disagree with some of them. In fact, you can often find directly 
conflicting opinions in the same file. See some of the discussions 
between Ras and myself in the pigs-msg file on how fat medieval pigs 
were. :-)
>
> I stumbled accros a recipe for Flemish stew, in wich I was offcourse
> immediatly interested, since this is a dish that is still eaten, and
> at first glance can easily pass for medieval food (meat, and the gravy
> is thickened with bread) (it didn't have any of the pittfalls that I
> had fallen in previously) appart for the fact that this recipe calls
> for cornstarch wich I thought wasn't period.
No, modern "cornstarch" is not period. In period, "corn" was the 
generic name for whatever the local grain was but I don't know if they 
used the term "cornstarch" in period. That is a good clue that a recipe 
isn't strictly period.
>
> (Now that I think about it, my problem with thickening sauces with
> breadcrumb is prolly to dry bread, cause the meat stew never has any
> problems thickening)
Perhaps this file in the FOOD section of the Florilegium might be of 
interest:
thickening-msg    (21K)  1/ 5/01    Use of period food thickening 
agents.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD/thickening-msg.html

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****