[Sca-cooks] Cookbooks: Was Substitute for Potatoes?

[Elise Fleming]

Judith wrote:
 >The part I think is amazing is that people need BOOKS just to COOK. If
 >I were putting on a documented Period feast, I would worry about that,
 >because I'd be assuming I was in charge of feeding royals and nobles
 >-- people who could afford to give books to their servants (cooks). 
 >(snip) I never owned or used a
 >single cookbook till I was about thirty and someone gave me one,
 >thinking it was such a shocking thing that I didn't own any cook
 >books. I assure you, though, I did cook, I never went hungry, and to
 >this day it doesn't occur to me to consult anything in writing if I'm
 >cooking for my family. I really find it hard to believe that I'm THAT
 >different from our ancestors.

I'm not sure if I'm understanding this correctly.  Are you saying that 
if you were in charge of doing a documented period feast you *would* or 
you *would not* use a period cookbook?  My first - and second - reading 
is that you would *not* use one.

Digestion-wise, we aren't really different from our ancestors.  But we 
do have some cultural/modern differences in how we process the 
ingredients and how we combine them.  For those reasons, using a period 
text is what would be preferable, rather than deciding to do something 
because that's how our family has done it "for years".

Alys K.
-- 
Elise Fleming
alysk at ix.netcom.com
http://home.netcom.com/~alysk/