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

[Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise]

> But I have to agree. Research that takes its shape based on the 
> conclusion you want to draw, instead of taking you in a certain 
> direction because it's good research and damn the torpedoes, as it 
> were, is a bad thing.

[Deleted most of  evil-nasty-proto-Laurel Rant.]
I don't see anything wrong with asking 'did they have anything like x' 
in period, as long as you are not starting with the intention of serving 
X.

If we think about the evolution of food and the ancestors of common 
foods or foods we know about now, and then look back to see if there 
were SIMILAR foods in period, that can lead us in interesting research 
directions.
 
> We've found a recipe that involve marinated, seared, boiled and 
> spiced beef, and one involving lebkuchen as flavoring and, perhaps, 
> thickening of a sweet sauce for meat. However, we have, so far, no 
> evidence that these elements were combined in a single process or 
> recipe, nor have we addressed the likelihood that the reason for the 
> vinegar in sauerbraten is either as a preservative, or as a 
> tenderizer, or both, since the recipes we've found call for wine.

Actually, Gwencat posted a vinegar-marinated recipe. 

We know that vinegar was used in cooking, specifically German and 
Eastern European cooking, in period. We have lots and lots of documented 
recipes.

We also know that many pre-1650 recipes that are for sauces that we 
nowadays serve separately, actually call for serving the food in the 
sauce and/or basting the roast in that sauce. 

If someone wanted to say, "what German and Eastern European meat dishes 
used vinegar, and how" that's a fun research topic.

If someone wants to discuss whether the use of sweets and sours in 
period german recipes is like or unlike the 19th century German and 
German-American use of those recipes, I don't see anything wrong with 
that.

To me, there's a difference between "I want to serve X, how do I 
document it" and "I'm interested in X-like dishes, are there any in 
period?"

Apologies to anyone who may be offended by my proto-Peer-Year and 
post-long-drive-back-from-Birka bluntness. 

-- 
-- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa, Knowledge Pika jenne at fiedlerfamily.net 
"Information wants to be a Socialist... not a Communist or a 
Republican." - Karen Schneider