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

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach 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.

No argument there. It's essentially what I said.

>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.

Sorry, I missed it. I only saw the wine one.

>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.

Again, I think we may need to look at what effect, of combination of 
effects, the vinegar is there to achieve, and that tends to be a 
really hard question when you can't ask the cook.

>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.

Eether do I. The problem is that sometimes, people hearing or reading 
such discussions are unable to distinguish between that and...:

>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?"

See, it's all about avoiding the unreasonable extreme. Cap'n Elias 
(arrrhhh!) posts a cautionary note about the evils of 
back-documentation, without actually accusing the poster of the query 
on sauerbraten of having done so, more of a "Here be culinary 
forensic dragons," warning. In other words, this is all very well, 
but watch out for X. I second.

You seem to be attempting to restore some kind of balance which may 
not need restoring. Obviously it would be bad if some poor soul says, 
"I want to do research on Schnitzengruben in period to see if it's 
twoo, it's twoo," and I were to say, "Just don't go there. You might 
<gasp!> back-document. And we all know how bad THAT is..."

But neither Elias nor I were saying anything like that.

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

Cain't blame a body fer doin' her job. ;-)

Adamantius

-- 




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la 
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them 
eat cake!"
	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
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