[Sca-cooks] Moghul Food

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jun 8, 2006, at 1:07 PM, lilinah at earthlink.net wrote:

> They would need to be scholars of food history from before 1601, and
> they're pretty rare, since most Indians, like most American and
> Europeans, don't know much about food from over 400 years ago.
>
> It seems to me that you continue to suggest we look at modern
> cookbooks, which are almost always not relevant, when threads concern
> SCA-period historical cooking. I've got plenty of Persian, Afghan,
> and Indian cookbooks on my shelves, and most are modern and not
> relevant to the topic.

I was recently told about some controversy in my Kingdom in which a  
Laurel recognized for her work in Persian studies announced in  
connection with some local cook's modern Middle Eastern cooking that  
modern ME cooking is fine for SCA use since Persian cooking has not  
changed materially for 1000 years, and her correspondents in modern  
Iran confirm this.

The guy who told me about all this is another Laurel who has  
extensively studied the Persian culture in our period, but hasn't  
done much of a study on food, and merely suspected that this claim  
was utter sheepdip, without any hard evidence of same.

I got out a modern Persian cookbook and showed him an approximate  
percentage of dishes prominently featuring ingredients the Persians  
almost certainly could not have had access to 1000 years ago. I  
pointed out that I couldn't be sure of the extent to which cooking  
methods and styles had changed, but that the likelihood was that some  
ancient, traditional methods had survived, and some had probably  
changed per the same cultural and social forces that caused available  
foodstuffs to change. Looking at Kitab al-Tabikh, which may not be  
completely identifiable with the Persian cookery of its time, but  
which appears to be Persian-influenced, at least, we find some pretty  
significant differences in techniques and styles.

> We do sometimes talk about modern food (ah, the old "Lutheran binder"
> thread), when such would be relevant. But you recommend modern stuff
> in threads on historic cooking. Like to see your name in glowing
> electrons?

I can't fully, and probably shouldn't, try to address this point, but  
I will say we're all in the SCA for different reasons, and sometimes  
it's hard to enter a large group and "fit in" while discovering that  
there's all kinds of levels of research involvement. Trying to help  
is a good thing, and, of course, it can also be a test of the  
patience when you get a lot of material you know isn't 100% relevant.

But then, tests are made to be passed ;-)

Adamantius