[Sca-cooks] Period or no?

[David Friedman]

>>There are plenty of rich filling soup-type things in the medieval recipes,
>>but nothign that equates to modern stew with meat, onions, and root 
>>vegetables
>>such as carrots and potatos.  Lots with meat onions, wine or 
>>vinegar, and dried
>>fruit, though, and they are yummy!
>
>This lack of stews in period has stumped me recently...  I'm doing 
>my third kitchen
>this coming weekend and was specifically asked to do stews.  The event is
>An Tir's Kingdom Bardic Championship, and the hosting group (the 
>Barony of Lions Gate)
>is doing a potluck on Saturday evening, with the barony providing 2 
>main dishes - a
>meat stew and a vegetarian one.
>
>Because I'm stubborn and don't want to be doing non-medieval food at an event,
>especially at a Kingdom event, I'm going with "plausibly period", 
>and making up
>my own recipe, based on what I know about what ingredients were available and
>the types of stuff medieval people liked.

I find this puzzling. Shouldn't we take the lack of stews in period 
as evidence that what we think of as stews were not the type of stuff 
medieval people liked, and hence that if you make up something that 
is more stewlike than the period recipes you are doing something that 
isn't plausibly period?

If you want things that are stewed (i.e. cooked in liquid) with 
substantial amounts of vegetables and perhaps some meat, you might 
want to look at period Islamic recipes. You can find quite a lot of 
them in the Miscellany, webbed at:

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/miscellany_pdf/Miscellany.htm
-- 
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com