[Sca-cooks] Introduction

[Stefan li Rous]

Ysabelle said:
  <<< Well, this is the first SCA cooking mailing list I've joined...  
Who
knows, it may actually cause me to learn how to cook! >>>

Welcome to the SCA-Cooks list!

We have all levels of cooking expertise on this list, from folks just  
learning to cook regular foods, not to mention medieval foods, to  
folks that have cooked quite medieval feasts for several hundred  
people. We have folks who have cooked for re-enactment events in real  
medieval kitchens over fireplaces with medieval cooking implements.  
We have several authors who have written well-received books and  
papers about medieval cooking.  We have folks, such as myself, who  
will likely never cook a medieval feast for a crowd of people but who  
happily cook a dish or two at home or for pot lucks, both in and  
outside of the SCA. When I joined this list, I started out close to  
the learning about how to cook regular foods side of things when I  
joined this list in 97, but I've learned quite a lot since then just  
listening to the others on this list.

<<<   My name is Ysabelle, and I hail from the frozen wasteland of the
Shire  of Tir Bannog, (Principality of Tir Righ, Kingdom of An Tir.)

    Look north, no, further north... keep looking... >>>

Aren't you still south of the Principality of Oertha? Where they  
build snow tunnels to travel between their houses and use dog sleds  
to get to work?  :-)

<<<   How in the world she deduced that I am a disaster in the kitchen,
and  could use all the help I can get from a post about using a bag
of  potato chips to check vital signs, I'll never know, but I am
impressed  at her deductive skills. >>>

As well as most of the period recipes that have been talked about on  
this list, you can also find the highlights of many of the  
discussions on cooking techniques in the Florilegium. You might want  
to glance through some of those files.

<<<   Can anyone point me at information on the period uses of spices to
preserve meat? >>>

Others have already pointed to some of the files in the Florilegium.  
Here are a few more:
rotten-meat-msg   (50K)  5/19/06    Comments on the "they used spices  
to cover
                                     the taste of rotten meat" myth.

More on food preservation, of all types:
canning-msg       (44K) 11/ 5/06    Use of canning in the SCA.  
Directions.
drying-foods-msg  (55K)  9/16/02    Drying foods in period and for  
the SCA.
egg-storage-msg   (17K)  9/10/04    Period and modern raw egg storage.
freezng-foods-msg (12K)  7/25/06    Freezing foods for storage.  
Techniques.
Lrds-Salt-Exp-art (15K)  9/11/00    "Lord's Salt Experiment" by Lady  
Hauviette
                                        d'Anjou.
pickled-foods-msg (130K) 2/ 6/06    Medieval pickled food. recipes.
potted-foods-msg  (16K)  5/21/04    Cooked foods put in pots and  
sealed w. fat.
Preservng-CMA-art (32K)  1/24/01    "Preserving Foods in the Current  
Middle
                                        Ages" by Hauviette d'Anjou.

The above files are all in the FOOD section.

meat-smoked-msg   (48K)  4/20/05    Medieval smoked meats. Smoking  
meats.
pickled-meats-msg (58K) 10/11/01    Period pickled meats. Lord's  
Salt. recipes.

These files are in the FOOD-MEATS section.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****