[Sca-cooks] Period or no?

[David Friedman]

>Pardon me for asking a question that may seem ignorant.. but is not 
>chicken and dumplings period? Also does anyone have some period stew 
>recipe's they are willing to share I am the main cook for our 
>household at events and need a few more ideas for fixing things to 
>appease the hungry peeps lol.

One problem with a question like this is that "period" is a somewhat 
ambiguous term. Some of us use it to mean "this dish was produced by 
following a recipe written down in period fairly closely." Other 
people use it to mean "you cannot prove that this dish could not have 
been made in period." And there are lots of intermediate positions.

In my view, starting with a recipes you already have and then trying 
to "document" it is almost always a mistake. At best, it is a lot 
more work than going the other direction--looking at period recipes 
and finding ones you like. Finding modern recipes and then 
"documenting" them is rather like finding a place to order pizza by 
calling phone numbers at random until you get one that turns out to 
be a pizza place.

At worst, what happens is that someone has a modern recipe he likes 
and then finds some excuse for calling it period--some period recipe 
or reference that has some connection, however tenuos, with what he 
wants to make. This is, unfortunately, pretty common in the SCA.

For a fairly striking example, those who have just gotten the 
penultimate issue of _Serve it Forth_ might want to look at the 
article "Some Thoughts on a 'Tasting Table' of Period Foods." The 
article contains a list of "period foods" offered and the URL of a 
web site which has the recipes--which were handed out on cards as 
period recipes. One of the things on the list is oat bread. The 
recipe uses, among other things, rolled oats, honey, mead or ale and 
oil or melted butter--none of which are in the supposed original. The 
"documentation" is a bread recipe whose only ingredients are flour, 
eggs, yeast and sugar. So the "redaction" is missing two of the four 
ingredients of the original and contains a bunch of ingredients not 
mentioned in the original--one of them being oats.

The original, I think, is the first part of the recipe for 
Rastons--but it has been retitled "Oat Brede."

Or in other words, the question "is X period" pushes one of my buttons.

Getting back to your stew question, it depends on what you mean by a 
stew. I think of the prototypical stew as cut up meat in a thick 
liquid with substantial root vegetables--and a lot of people seem to 
think of that as vaguely medieval. So far as I know, there are no 
such recipes in the surviving medieval European collections--the 
closest are in the Islamic ones. There are recipes for things that 
are stewed--i.e. cooked by boiling--but typically the only root 
vegetable with them, if any, is onion. Jadwiga has alread mentioned 
several in her reply. Here is one more:

Beef y-Stewed
Two Fifteenth Century p. 6/52

Take faire beef of the ribs of the forequarters, and smite in fair 
pieces, and wash the beef into a fair pot; then take the water that 
the beef was sodden in, and strain it through a strainer and seethe 
the same water and beef in a pot, and let them boil together; then 
take canel, cloves, maces, grains of paradise, cubebs and onions 
y-minced, parsley and sage, and cast thereto, and let them boil 
together; and then take a loaf of bread, and stepe it with broth and 
vinegar, and then draw it through a strainer, and let it be still; 
and when it is near enough, cast the liquor thereto, but not too 
much, and then let boil once, and cast saffron thereto a quantity; 
then take salt and vinegar, and cast thereto, and look that it be 
poynant enough, and serve forth.

about 1 lb+ beef	1/4 t cloves	4 slices bread
3 medium onions	1 t sage	pinch of saffron
1/4 c chopped parsley	1/4 t mace	1 t salt
1 bouillon cube	1/8 t whole grains of paradise (grind)	vinegar
1/2 t cinnamon	1/8 t whole cubebs (grind)

Add fresh water to cover and bouillon, bring to a boil, add parsley, 
onion, and spices. Simmer about 45 minutes. Meanwhile, put bread to 
soak in water and broth from the meat. At the end of 45 minutes mush 
up the bread and add that, the saffron, salt and vinegar, bring to a 
boil and serve.

-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com