[Sca-cooks] tilapia

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Aug 1, 2008, at 4:44 PM, Susan Fox wrote:

> Tirloch wrote:
>> What do people feel about using tilapia for an event fish?
>>
>>
>> I know it was around in biblical days and in the Roman and early  
>> Middle Ages
>> in some countries.
>>
>>
> I'm good with it.  It's called St. Peter's Fish and features in the  
> Bible story of St. Peter catching this fish.  It may have been only  
> introduced to the USA within most of our lifetimes but that's  
> irrelevant, it's been in the Middle East all the time before that.


I've heard that story told of the John D'ory/Dory, too (or are they  
supposed to be the same thing?), but how can a fish in the Bible  
possibly be identified specifically by species with any degree of  
accuracy, with species coming and going either through extinction or  
migration, several layers of text translation, etc.?

Well, regardless, tilapia is easily analagous to a number of firm,  
white fish accessible to medieval Europeans; perch comes to mind; my  
argument for serving it at an SCA feast would be more about the fact  
that a cooked fillet of tilapia on a plate would not likely be seen as  
out-of-place to a medieval European, rather than the question of  
whether the tilapia was actually known, specifically, to them.

Hey, serve it to King John. Is he gonna say, "Away with this impostor  
and bring me a surfeit of lampreys and/or peaches," or is he gonna  
say, "Hey, cool, galantine of fyssche! My fave!" My guess is the latter.

Adamantius






"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls,  
when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's  
bellies."
			-- Rabbi Israel Salanter