[Sca-cooks] Drizzle of Honey

Craig Daniel teucer at pobox.com
Thu Oct 29 09:02:50 PDT 2009


On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 11:59 AM, Craig Daniel <teucer at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 11:48 AM, Susan Lin <susanrlin at gmail.com> wrote:
>> While the recipes may not be documentable I do not think they are all
>> modern.  I believe (and people will argue and yell at me but it my opinion
>> and I will stick to it) that some may be based upon historical information.
>> Everyone who wishes only to cook from documentable sources is entirely
>> welcome to dismiss this book but I did find the history interesting.  There
>> is a large section of footnotes and bibliography in the book.
>
> The trouble is, they're recipes based on historical information about
> food, but not on historical food.
>
> Imagine, if you will, that you're a historian five hundred years in
> the future. You see a mention of an American family of the early 21st
> century eating fried chicken, but for whatever reason all authentic
> recipes for fried chicken have vanished. So you publish a book about
> 21st century American food, mention that it included fried chicken,
> and throw in a recipe for chicken stir-fry.

By the way, that's not to say the book shouldn't be used - a lot of
the dishes that were served aren't documented in historical recipes,
and making guesses about them based on recorded mentions of them plus
recipes that do survive seems entirely reasonable. But for me
everything I do in the society from food to fighting is in the service
of learning about period, and it's important for me to keep the
distinction in my mind between "this very nearly approximates what
people had historically" and "this might be right, and it's closer
than just eating modern food, but we don't know."

 - Jaume


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