[Sca-cooks] Perioid versus period

[Chris Stanifer]

--- Phlip <phlip at 99main.com> wrote:

> > Well, I can give you two reasons off the top of my head why a lot of new
> SCA cooks are hesitant to
> > plunge into period foods...
> >
> > 1) The recipes.  Many of them are almost unintelligible to someone who
> does not have experience
> > with them.  Very few list ingredient amounts which a new cook can
> understand.  Fewer still list
> > techniques which are immediately identifiable to a novice cook.  The
> modern redactions are under
> > debate most of the time, and this will lead to number 2...
> 
> But, don't they READ the recipes? "Seething in oil" is frying no matter how
> you look at it.

Maybe not to the uninitiated novice cook, who sees a whole litany of 'new' terms in these recipes,
and wonders how they will ever decipher them.  I mean, heck... when I first saw a 'medieval
recipe', I laughed out loud.  "You've got to be kidding me!  Who wrote this???"


 I can understand a new cook being nervous about new recipes,
> but a new cook is nervous about ANY recipe, just as anybody new to a skill
> is nervous about trying it.

Right.  But I think that answers your original question.  They are nervous about trying out new
(i.e. old) recipes.



 
> > 2) If a new cook chooses the wrong redaction, by the wrong author for the
> group they are cooking
> > for, they face the possibility of ridicule.  Just calling a spade a spade
> here.
> >
> 
> Is the ability to look at a recipe and have an idea about what it's going to
> taste like so unusual? 

Actually, yes.  I have worked with professional chefs who don't have a clue what a dish will taste
like until it comes out of the oven/pan/whatever.  Compound this with the fact that, if you have
never tasted 'verjus' or 'cardamom', you really have no foundation to build your 'mental taste'
on.  Admittedly, there are some pretty unusual ingredients in some period recipes.




And, who's going to ridicule you in the privacy of
> your own kitchen. ?


Hopefully no one...but you've got to come out from behind the kitchen door eventually, and
actually share your attempts with others.

  
> There are some weird rumors going around for cooking in quantity, starting
> with the one about reducing your spice proportions when you're cooking large
> batches of stuff- 

Salt, definitely.  




 But,
> for an accomplished cook to be fearful about experimenting with a different
> cuisine- it just doesn't make sense.

No, not for an accomplished cook. But for a novice cook, yes.


WdG

=====
Through teeth of sharks, the Autumn barks.....and Winter squarely bites me.


		
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