[Sca-cooks] Historical Apples

[Lilinah]

Johnnae wrote:
>I just did a major article on apples. (It's still in press, so I can't
>refer anyone to a link yet.)

I will look forward to it.

>Perhaps the judges wanted a sentence in the documentation that read--
>"I do not live on a farm or have sufficient land to cultivate my own produce
>and meats. Also lacking a 15th (14th, 16th, substitute as needed) market
>I used products from the local organic market and superorganic mart."

I confess i did not read the documentation myself to know what 
details it contained.

I know in the past when i've judged cooking competitions, we never 
marked anyone down for using modern strawberries, for example (as if 
we could find Medieval fraise du bois (Fragaria vesca) or fraise 
hautbois (Fragaria moschata) in a supermarket!) All commercially sold 
strawberries in the US are a cross between two New World varieties 
and are huge and tasteless compared even to the strawberries i 
remember as a kid.

I know that the entrant substituted apples for quinces, because the 
lead judge was reading that part of the documentation aloud. That was 
when the lead judge said, "Quinces are still in season, they should 
have used quinces". Well, actually, quinces are just coming into 
season, so i'm not surprised if that cook couldn't find them. I 
*might* have found them in the Berkeley Bowl, but not everyone is so 
lucky to live near a good produce market.

After that, they criticized the cook, saying, "And they were not 
period apples." I'd like to know just what kind of apples WERE period 
for a 13th century 'Abbasid or Andalusian recipe, because, frankly, i 
have no idea.
-- 
Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)
the persona formerly known as Anahita

My LibraryThing
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/lilinah