[Sca-cooks] Medieval questionaire

Lilinah lilinah at earthlink.net
Sat Oct 27 18:53:10 PDT 2007


Well, i took the questionnaire and got them all right except the 
feast/buffet question.

At a medieval feast (not necessarily an SCA feast), diners sit down 
and are served, and may not be able to choose what to eat - it could 
depend on where each fits in the social hierarchy as to which dishes 
are available.

At a buffet diners serve themselves then sit down to eat, and they 
get to choose which dishes they want to eat and have the option of 
selecting from all of them.

As for someone's comment on tea, tea is Camellia sinensis. It's a 
native of Asia and didn't make it to Europe until the 17th century, 
about which time it made it to parts the Middle East, although in 
some places it was later - tea didn't get to Morocco until the 18th 
C. - as a "gift" from the English, who were trying to curry favor - 
and IIRC, Persia - which surprised me, since it's so close to the 
Orient, but tea didn't get there until more than a century later than 
coffee, which it supplanted.

Those herbal beverages we drink are really tisanes. But after tea 
became common, the term became applied to almost any plant soaked in 
hot water and strained out, after which the plant-infused water was 
drunk - i suspect this didn't happen until sometime in the 19th C.

In modern French "the' " (pronounced "tay") is tea, and "tisane" is a 
water-infused-with-plant beverage.

We just use a recent terminology in English which can be confusing.
-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita



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