[Sca-cooks] - a slight rant on logic (was Sauerbraten)

[Jeff Gedney]

I just feel that it is necessary to point out a little something...

This whole excercise is "back documentation", the practice of trying to find proof that a modern thing existed in period. 

While backdocumenting a thing does sometimes work, it is a categorically unscientific process, and, more often than not, winds up with misleading and misinterpreted results.

A search was begun for a modern recipe in period.
because the end result is already known and desired, the results are aready being unintentially misrepresented as "period Sauerbraten" recipes.
But as yet no period Sauerbraten has been presented.
Several slightly SIMILAR recipes for boiled and slightly spiced beef form period have been presented. BUT NONE OF THESE ARE SOURBRATEN. The differ significantly in ingredients and preparation. 
But since the desired finding - period Sauerbraten- was already established before any research was done, the results of the research are being unintentionally recast as precursors to or even a variant of the modern dish itself.  

The fact is, if you take any modern recipe from Cheeseburgers to Sushi, and you look hard enough, and are inclined to look at any evidence with the outcome already in mind, you probably will "find" that modern recipe.   

As cooks you dont have to justify a recipe as period if you want it. Just cook it. 
If you want period recipes, find period recipes to cook. 

But dont misuse the historical record to justify something you aready have in mind.
That is the same error (though to a different degree) as perpetrated by Creationists who use the "fossil record" to justify their views as science".

so... get a collection of cool period recipes together and cook from them. 
If some of them are the same as modern recipes, that is cool.
Get a collection of cool strictly modern recipes and cook from them.
But do keep them separate. 

Until a period recipe is found that is the same or very similar spicing and preparation, what we are looking at is not Sauerbraten, but some variant of boiled spiced beef. There is plenty of that to be found in the corpus of recipes, but they are not Sauerbraten. 

to quote from a Monty Python Album:
"'All wood burns', states Sir Bedevere, 'therefore all that burns is wood'... this is of course pure bulls**t! Universal affirmatives can only be _partially_ converted... for example, all of Alma Cogan is dead, but only SOME of the class of Dead People are Alma Cogan. 'Obvious!' One would think..."

All of the Sauerbraten recipes are boiled spiced beef, but only SOME of the boils spiced beef recipes can be considered Sauerbraten... 
and I haven't seen any of those from a period text... 

...YET 


Capt Elias
-Renaissance Geek of the Cyber Seas

-------------------------------------------------------------
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather 
wood, divide the work, and give orders.  Instead, teach them
to yearn for the vast and endless sea. 
  - Antoine de Saint Exupery