[Sca-cooks] Adaptation and Redaction

[Donna Green]

> 
> What about about modern ingredients and their use?
> How many cooks create their feasts using only
> organic stone ground flours, heirloom organic
> meats, and organic vegetables, fruits, butters,
> imported cheeses, etc.?
> Can one justify that expense which can easily
> be triple or more? Does that make the recipe
> an adaptation?
> 
> Johnnae

Yes, choice of ingredients is very important. 

At a feast I cooked a couple of months ago (The Perfectly Period Feast II), I did make an effort to source some of the ingredients at the higher end of the quality/ expense/ spectrum. Certainly not all, but some ... for example, a whole, sustainably raised Atlantic salmon rather than a Pacific salmon even though the Pacific would have been cheaper. Period Europeans would have eaten the Atlantic species. (We almost didn't either, but that's another story.) 

Also, I am happy to now be able to do most of my cheese-making with milk straight from the cow since cheese in period wouldn't come from pasteurized homogenized milk. B

ut, this has to be a choice of where you are willing to spend money, and of course, have enough money to have that choice. For the feasts I cooked when I was in college, it had to be cheap, cheap, cheap. Now I can afford to be more selective.

Juana Isabella
West