[Sca-cooks] Recipes

[Tom Vincent]

No problem.  If I was entering a dish in a competition, you're damned straight that I'd be making sure that the ingredients, techniques and recipes would be directly and accurately tied to a place, event & recipient(s) through primary documentation.
   
  However, I just happened upon this restaurant's website and thought...oh!...Lavender! Honey!  Pine nuts!  Artichokes!  Proscuitto!  What a lovely combination of period Italian ingredients!
   
  No, I made no claims as to the period authenticity of these recipes (though I was thinking of replacing the green beans with fava beans...), just sharing a few recipes that I found relevant.  I don't have my library in front of me, but with 15 years of Med/Renn cooking under my belt, I'm pretty confident I could find a few related recipes.  I do Colonial cooking, too, and love showing people the Med/Renn roots of Early American recipes (like the Med/Renn original 'cranberry dressing').  I would never think of serving my Cauliflower Custard recipe, for example, to a Med/Renn audience because it's so obvious (to me, anyway) 17th century.
   
  I *do* happen to -believe- that the surviving Med/Renn recipes represent just the tip of the iceberg regarding the possible combinations of how period ingredients were combined, especially by the peasantry & middle-class (what there was of it).  I certainly stay away from dishes that are blatantly obvious in their modernity (I suppose hamburgers and hot dogs *could* have been made in period of period ingredients, though I've never seen recipes even close).
   
  Maybe I'm channelling the recently departed author of the discredited 'Fabulous Feasts'. :)
   
  I've noticed that the feasts in this area tend to be a bit lax (not much, though) about period authenticity and a good combination of period ingredients prepared in a period manner would probably be just fine for a normal (read: non-royal presence) feast.  I'm proud to have helped out with a few of them and look forward to helping with future ones.
   
  Yes, if I were to suggest preparing them for a local feast, I'd want to go through my collection of period cookbooks and other assorted tomes to find strongly related recipes before offering them up.  Just don't see many artichoke dishes served at feasts...and I'm interested in promoting healthier feasts with less fat and more veggies anyway. :)
   
  Believe me, if I thought a recipe I was posting was period, I'd provide supporting evidence for it.
   
   
  Duriel
  

Huette von Ahrens <ahrenshav at yahoo.com> wrote:
  Duriel,

These look like great recipes. Thank you for posting them. While this list is
primarily about medieval and renaissance cooking, we like to stray to the modern
and I am happy for that. We don't always have to be didactic.

But I have to ask this question. I am not trying to put you down. I am trying
to understand you and how you think. My question is this: Why do you call these
modern recipes "period"? Do you have actual period recipes that these are the
redactions of? If you do, please post them. Or do you think that every recipe, 
where the ingredients could have been used during period, are period recipes? 
You don't have to call every recipe you post here period, especially when they aren't. 
I have looked at them. The ingredients, with the except of green beans and maybe arugula, 
were eaten, but the methodologies of these recipes aren't entirely period. These are 
recipes that I can and probably will make for myself and my family, but I would never 
make them for an SCA banquet.

Please don't feel you have to justify every recipe you post here as being "period".
Post them and call them modern and let us just enjoy them.

Huette




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Tom Vincent
Demon Prince (retired)
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- Molly Ivins 
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=20595

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