[Sca-cooks] Crocodile was Magpies

Kimberly Vallance tibbles74 at gmail.com
Tue Mar 4 16:13:26 PST 2008


  I know I am new to the list only posting a few times, but I have been
watching conversations and a few things have come to my attention,
specifically with this conversation. Just because someone can not whip out a
reference does not make their opinion a flight of fancy as someone stated.
No more then my opinion of fresh tomato being icky is a flight of fancy or
that khli *a fermented meat dish of Morocco* is just ewww.

  An opinion is not the same thing as saying something is a fact. It is to
quote m-w.com 1 a*:* a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about
a particular matter 2 a*:* belief stronger than impression and less strong
than positive knowledge.


I rarely post to this group as I am afraid of getting my head bitten off for
being wrong or having the wrong opinion. I can see having documentation if
someone wanted to present something as a fact. But getting on someone for an
opinion? Now I will probably get flamed and told how wrong I am but meh I
don't like watching someone get flamed for an opinion.


Anne



On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 3:46 PM, Terry Decker <t.d.decker at worldnet.att.net>
wrote:

>
>
> > Johnna Holloway wrote:
> >>Interesting. Can you provide the recipes and text that show that
> >>the classical Romans ate snakes and crocodiles? Not medicinal, but
> >>actually
> >>banquet fare for the crocodiles and snakes. Apicius oddly doesn't list
> >>snakes
> >>or crocodiles, so what source does?
> >>Also What medieval Arab and Chinese recipes can you offer for eating
> >>crocodile?
> >>Which texts and which recipes? Again non-medicinal references would
> >>be helpful.
> >>
> >>Johnnae
> >>
> >>
> >>Dragon wrote:
> >>>Considering all the other unusual things (by modern standards) that
> >>>the upper class Romans consumed, I would be surprised that
> >>>Crocodile and snakes of various kinds are not among them.
> >>>
> >>>Chinese medicinal texts may be enlightening. In China to this day,
> >>>food is still considered medicinal and what you eat is considered
> >>>to affect the balance of health in many of the same ways that the
> >>>Arab influenced health theories of the Medieval period espoused.
> >>>
> >>>Dragon
> >>>
> > ---------------- End original message. ---------------------
> >
> > You are misinterpreting what I said. I did not say I had
> > documentation for any of this.
> >
>
> The problem is you have presented an opinion, but you can not explain how
> you arrived at that opinion by documenting the sources that provide the
> logical framework for that opinion.  Without such supporting references,
> an
> opinion is a flight of fantasy.
>
> One of the key things about this list is we will ask for recipes and
> documentation.
>
> > What I did say is that they ate a ton of odd things so it would not
> > surprise me if they did eat these things also.  There are historical
> > accounts of all sorts of exotic species being brought to Rome for
> > gladiatorial games (no, I don't have any references handy, this is
> > from memory). It is not a far stretch to think that once these
> > animals had been dispatched in the games that they would have been
> eaten.
> >
>
> While some Romans ate a number of oddities, some of which were imported at
> great expense, the common diet was cereal grain, wine and olive oil,
> supplemented with local vegetables, meat and fish.  I think this can be
> safely demonstrated with readings of Apicius, Cato, Columella, and Pliny.
> While there are a number of references to some of the stranger things
> eaten
> in Rome and even some recipes, to my knowledge, there is no references to
> them having eaten crocodiles and snakes.
>
> And my memory reminds me that the game killed in the arena was fed to the
> slaves, but I don't happen to have a source for that so I consider it
> suspect.  I probably need to read Donald G. Kyle's Spectacles of Death in
> Ancient Rome to see if he has any pointers to the information.
>
> > I not specifically aware of any texts in Chinese medicine that regard
> > use of the crocodile as I have not done any such research. However,
> > through a casual knowledge of modern Chinese medicinal practices, I
> > know they use a lot of reptiles including all sorts of lizards,
> > cobras and other snakes. So again, I would not be surprised if they
> > did use crocodiles in some medicinal soup. Virtually every edible
> > item in traditional Chinese culture is associated with some sort of
> > supposed medical benefit.
> >
> >
> >
> > Dragon
>
> While you may be correct, your knowledge is "casual" and unsupported, so
> that it is difficult to gauge the accuracy of your opinion.
>
> Bear
>
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