[Sca-cooks] Culinary Philosophy was Tree Saps: Was New World Food

Terry Decker t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net
Sat Apr 26 16:09:54 PDT 2008


By this logic, we can make a perfectly good case that MacDonald's hamburgers 
are period (in fact Adamantius has done just that to the vast amusement of 
the list).  The proper term for what you support is "speculation."  Absence 
of evidence is not evidence of absense, but it's not historic fact either. 
If you produce something in a Medieval manner for which there is no 
evidence, that is not a historic fact either.  It is your modern "perioid" 
creation.

The name of the game for a number of us on this list is "historical 
accuracy."  We take what we can document (culinary history) and try to 
reproduce it as close to the original as we can (historical cooking).  When 
discussing it, we try to distinguish between fact, interpretation and 
speculation.  It doesn't always work that way but we try.

"Period" covers at least a thousand years and numerous cultures.  Magyar 
horse steak tenderized under the saddle and capon in orange sauce are both 
period, but serving them together is not historically accurate.  As for 
blancmange, how many centuries and countries do those variant recipes 
represent?  What is the evolution of those recipes?  Simply equating all of 
the blancmange recipes as "documentation" suggests that you may be using 
"creativity" to mask a limited knowledge of the subject rather than as a 
tool to enhance your knowledge.

How you play this game is, of course, up to you.  I like to take transcripts 
or translations of period recipes and work out how to prepare the dish. 
I'll take a group of recipes that are appropriate for a time and place and 
create a feast from them.  My last feast was Italian.  The one before it 
Elizabethean.  And they were both very creative, very satisfying and totally 
documented.  I enjoy chasing odd tid-bits of history and researching pieces 
of the march of culinary history.  I've been wrong, I've made errors, and 
I've tried to learn from my mistakes.  Working inside the constraints of 
documentation actually expands knowledge and creativity in ways that pure 
speculation can't.

I hope you will create your own version of the historical accuracy game.

Bear



>
> Well there is the difference I suppose.  I don't think we have to have it 
> in the written word or a painting to believe that someone, somewhere, 
> given the tools, and skills of the time, wouldn't have tried it.
>
> There are hundreds of thousands of things we do everyday that aren't 
> written down in a book, or a picture painted of.  It doesn't mean it 
> didn't happen, only means that no one bothered to record it.
>
> I think that this documentation is good for base, it gives us what tools, 
> processes, techniques, and goods were generally available, but I don't 
> think I need limit myself to only those dishes we have recipes for, or 
> only those techniques dipicted in paintins and tapestries.
>
> If I'm using the same tools, etc, and stumble across mixing two things 
> never mentioned as mixed, or cook something using a different process that 
> was available then, I don't feel it's less period because I can't document 
> this very dish.
>
> We know people played with recipes and techniques even back then.  Look at 
> the variations of 'documented' recipes for Blancmanger.  I agree we need 
> to be as period as we can, but don't think we should leave out creativity 
> for the sake of documentation.
>
> Eira




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