[Sca-cooks] Re: Medieval turkey?

[Louise Smithson]

    >We got a nice mention in an Oregon newspaper, but, Medieval turkey?
>http://www.heraldandnews.com/articles/2005/12/09/news/top_stories/top1.txt
>Phlip

Maybe it was masquerading as a bustard? ;-)
Kiri
   
  The alternative is that the member interviewed simply doesn't know the difference between the Renaisance and the Medieval ages.  SCA time period covers both. Turkey was available widely in europe by the end of the SCA time period.  There are market prices from London that show how widely they were raised, and Scappi has about six recipes for it.  Plus they are referrenced in a good proportion of his feast menus. 
  I'm thinking of working up a class for war on new world foods in old world SCA period.  My theory is that the assimilated foodstuffs have several things in common: 
  Similarity to an existing food
Similarity to existing culture (farming) methods
  Superiority of yield/flavor/keeping quality
   
  So things like new world bean, new world squash, corn, turkey were rapidly assimilated and spread while things like potato and tomato were not. 
  BTW scappi has recipes for all four of those new world items in it.  
  Don't ask me for more details, I'm working on a theory here and I have a lot more research to complete before I'm ready to present a class on this.  One source alone is not sufficient to work from.  I'll have to hit agricultural texts, cookbooks from other countries, tax records, estate records etc. before I feel I have enough information to back up my theory.  
   
  Helewyse



			
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