[Sca-cooks] Basque Food

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Aug 27, 2005, at 2:28 AM, Huette von Ahrens wrote:

>
>
> --- Robin <rcmann4 at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>> I don't know who Vidal du Baton Malaxatxevarria is, though the  
>> last part
>> is a Basque surname.  My guess is that this is a traditional Basque
>> recipe of unknown age.  It has no blatantly OOP ingredients.  The
>> Atlantias MOAS page has links to all kinds of recipes, from  
>> documentably
>> medieval to medievalish to "traditional" to blatantly modern.
>>
>
> Ummmm ... Pimentos are New World ...
>
> Huette

I believe that Brighid referred to them as, essentially, not  
blatantly non-period. And this is a Spanish recipe, after all, but  
capsicums of all sorts do appear to have been in use somewhat earlier  
in parts of Southern Europe than, say, in England. My suspicion is  
that Brighid knows full well they're New World, and was admitting to  
some possibility, even if less likely, that they were used anyway.

It looks to me (more or less a half-awake lurker these days; even my  
SCA time has been interesting lately) that in the absence of actual  
period Basquaise recipes, a modernish one in what is now a  
recognizably Basque style has been given, one which contains  
ingredients that might conceivably have been used prior to 1601.

NB on pimientos: in some recipes these are allspice, which are also  
New World. Sometimes you have to look carefully to figure out which  
one is intended.

  Adamantius




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04