[Sca-cooks] Sca-cooks] Yippee!!!!

[Diane & Micheal Reid]

What he said.
 Cealian
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius.magister at verizon.net>
To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 01, 2006 8:04 AM
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Sca-cooks] Yippee!!!!


> 
> On Oct 1, 2006, at 2:27 AM, Stefan li Rous wrote:
> 
>> Congratulations. I've not been involved with any professional
>> cooking, what kind of things do these textbooks cover? I assume there
>> isn't much on medieval or historic cooking. Do they cover mostly
>> cooking techniques? How to manage a kitchen? nutrition? food safety?
>> I assume they aren't primarily cookbooks.
> 
> They tend to cover the basic techniques (and some advanced ones) used  
> in classical French cookery, not so much because this is generally  
> acknowledged as the greatest cuisine on Earth (although some people  
> will tell you that, and they may even have a point), but because it's  
> completely adaptable to just about any professional food-service  
> situation -- even restaurants that don't serve French food tend to  
> use some recognizable variant of Escoffier's brigade system, with the  
> work of the kitchen being divided up and managed largely the same way  
> since the turn of the 20th century, and possibly as far back as the  
> 1880's.
> 
> The techniques themselves tend to be applicable outside the field of  
> French cookery: most cuisines have an application for, say, julienned  
> carrots, and unless a cookbook is written in Mandarin or something,  
> it'll probably use that term. If you can saute you can stir-fry, etc.
> 
> Food-service textbooks tend to include recipes designed to teach the  
> techniques, with such variations as are applicable for various  
> regional cuisines. So, for example, they'll give a basic bechamel  
> sauce recipe, then show you how to add parmiggiano or Gruyere cheese  
> to make Mornay sauce, or Cheddar for the cheddar sauce Americans  
> sometimes put on broccoli or cauliflower or to make macaroni and  
> cheese. Sometimes there's a special section at the back with recipes  
> for things restaurants serve that fall outside of the basic French  
> brigade system, specialty foods like French onion soup or son-of-a- 
> bitch (okay, Texas chili; restaurants don't serve S.O.B. AFAIK), or  
> maybe a chapter on Japanese food with a brief explanation on why and  
> how the rest of the book doesn't really address this subject.   
> Recipes will often tend to be in large but manageable numbers, say 25  
> servings.
> 
> While they tend not to dwell on the historical aspects of cookery,  
> they can still be very helpful in designing modern adaptations of  
> period recipes, especially in large quantities. Their recipe for  
> chicken fricassee, for example, is probably pretty easy to turn into  
> a respectable bukkenade, and coq au vin becomes a period civey  
> without too much trouble, and you know how much chicken, eggs, and  
> onion to buy.
> 
> Adamantius
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