Rant on research; was, Re: [Sca-cooks] Re: Coffyns

[Woodrow Jarvis Hill]

On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 11:32:15 -0500, Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise <jenne at fiedlerfamily.net> wrote:
[snip]
> In the time I've been on the SCA-Cooks list, I've watched over and over
> again how people are ushered away from 'secondary sources' that talk
> about the historiography of cooking and kitchens and so forth, in terms
> of historical records analysis and archaelogy, in favor of
> recipe-reading. I don't dismiss recipe reading. If you want to cook
> period dishes, you need to read lots of recipes and try 'em out. But if
> you want to know about period foodways, you need to go further than the
> books of recipes.
> 
> I've had too many arguments on SCA Cooks that were informed ONLY by
> recipes and modern homesteading, because people couldn't or wouldn't
> read things like _Feeding a City: York_ and basic texts like Gies and
> Gies... How long ago was it that there was a majority discussing meat
> production on this list that didn't believe in the existence of period
> butchers and butcher's shops? 

Hi. I'm Asim.  I think a few friends of mine are out here...and, now that I'm a little more free at work, I'm getting back into cooking.  I'm not planning to do any event feasts, right now, but I am planning to playing with redactions, doing research, etc.  But more on me another time, perhaps...
The reason I find this Ironic is that, until recently, things like gov't records and the like were all a prospective Ottoman cooking re-creator, such as myself, had to go on.  I'm blessed, and fundamentally happy with, the vast array of tailored lists of foodstuffs that went into the Palace kitchen, as well as on the street.  There's a wonderful English-language work on the history of Ottoman food, much of which deals with how food what prepared, dealt with, and fit into the culture overall -- it's laying next to my bed right now, in fact, waiting for me to finish reading it.
The Ottoman researcher, however, does lack actual recipes.  Luckily for me, a few months ago, a friend stumbled (almost literally) over a book, written in Turkish by a Greek researcher, who redacted a bunch of period and just-out-of-period recipes.  Sadly, this layperson researcher does NOT read Turkish...yet. :)  But at least I have the work, and can carry on...and when I do get the recipes pulled out and verified, I have the ability to build a feast around not just food, but the culture of the food, so to speak.  It's a wonderful gift, and I'd not have given up the last 3 years of research hardships for it.
In part, that's because one of my eventual goals is to do a High, or Near-High, Autencity Ottoman SCA Event (it's easy to have room for people who only do European, as Ambassadors from other courts, which happened a lot in period.)  I've been lucky beyond measure to have worked with a bunch of talented folks on a High Authenticity private dinner at Pennsic 2 years running, now, and what I've learned about not just cooking a meal from recipes, but building a milieu for the meal, has been amazing.  I can't imagine doing "just a feast", anymore; I want to do, and build, re-creation experiences.

Gah.  I'm beginning to sound like Walt Disney...but I confess -- I love research.  And I love having the time, and space, and energy to cook now.  

> As long as we prefer reading recipes and navelgazing conversation with
> actually looking around at the sources available to us, we DO end up
> with people talking about medieval cooking in the SCA who don't know
> even as much about it as Aliki did when he/she wrote a kid's book in
> 1985!

I can't say much about European* works; I have, somewhere in the book stacks, a couple of works; TAKE A THOUSAND EGGS..., a book on Tudor feasts, etc.  Is the commentary here pretty accurate?  I mean, it's a different world, really, European is...although there are a lot of surface similarities (guilds, a feudal-like system, etc.), the subtle differences tend to add up.
It's always been true that "word of mouth" tends to educate people.  I also do a bit of raqs (the period term for "bellydance") research as well, and the hell I've gone through with people telling me all sorts of origin stories of raqs that they heard from their teacher, who heard it from a friend who's been to Egypt, who...well, you get the idea.
What I sorted out, eventually, was that people aren't lazy.  But there are folks who just want to get to the point; they want to cook, dance, etc. And they are happy to accept a set of concepts that allow them to do that with as little "friction" as possible.  I suspect you're documenting another case of a similar idea.  Mostly, I just document, let my work stand for itself, and speak out when I can...it's the only way I've stayed sane through all this. :)

> Ok. Deep breath. I'm better now.

Me, too.  Hope no one minds me prattling along...sukran(Thanks!) for listening!

----asim al-talib, boy Recreator