[Sca-cooks] Russian Recipes

[Bronwynmgn at aol.com]

In a message dated 10/2/2004 11:55:19 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
BeckysQuilt at aol.com writes:

<<By the time oral histories have 
been written, how much has been lost or changed? How old are they? Could 
recipes 
that were finally written in the 1700s actually be old favorites from our SCA 
specified time period?>>

The problem is that there is rarely a way to determine the answer to those 
questions accurately.  One way is to look at ingredients; anything that uses new 
world ingredients such as chocolate, vanilla, capsicum peppers, potatos, etc 
has either changed significantly from any similar recipe in our period or was 
invented after our period.  Combinations of ingredients can help as well; for 
instance, more modern recipes rarely if ever use sweet spices such as cinnamon 
or ginger with meat, while period recipes frequently do.  Therefore a meat 
recipe is more likely to be modern if it only uses savory spices, and more 
likely to be period if it uses sweet ones.
Yet, there are "old favorite" recipes even today which clearly have 
antecedents in our period, because we have surviving recipes from our period for foods 
which are very similar if not identical - examples include macaroni and 
cheese, funnel cakes, and even fried cheese sticks.
In short, the only way to tell for sure if the recipe transmitted via oral 
history really represents something made in the SCA period is to find an 
existing SCA period recipe for a food that is identical or close to identical.  
Otherwise, it is only an educated guess at most.

Brangwayna