[Sca-cooks] Cut-Off Date for Cookery Books?

[JIMCHEVAL at aol.com]

I'm presuming by "period" you mean SCA period and not Medieval period? The  
distinction may be obvious to many here, but it;s important to avoid any  
confusion (1600 is already well into the Renaissance and nudging the Early  
Modern era).

My own advice would be to go recipe by recipe and check each  against 
earlier similar recipes. Recipes evolve.

Here is how Wikipedia  defines a galantine:

"A galantine is a French dish of de-boned stuffed  meat, most commonly 
poultry or fish, that is poached and served cold, coated  with aspic. Galantines 
are often stuffed with forcemeat, and pressed into a  cylindrical shape."

This is in keeping with other definitions out there.
 
Now here's a galantine from the Enseignemenz:
 
"Lamprey galantine
If you want to make lamprey galantine, take leavened  bread, and crush it, 
and set it to cook with the blood of the lamprey[s] and  good white wine, 
and let them be raised [poached?] in this same wine, and put in  a great deal 
of pepper, and enough salt, then take the lampreys and put under a  cloth to 
cool, and then take bread, crush it and soak it with vinegar. And when  you 
have done this, strain it through a bag and then put it in a clean frying  
pan, and boil it, stirring constantly so that it does not burn, and then let 
it  cool, and stir it well, and then take your powders of ginger, cinnamon 
and  clove, put them before on your lampreys and spoon and put into your  
bowls."

No aspic, nor anything similar.
 
Blancmange changed drastically over the centuries, century by century. One  
would have to go recipe by recipe to see how this:

"Blancmange
If you  want to make blancmange, take the wings and the feet of hens and 
set them to  cook in water, and take a little rice and soak it in this water, 
then cook it  over a low fire and then shred the meat into a very fine 
tangle and set it to  cook with a little sugar. Thus you will have what is called 
laceis [“lacey”].  And if you want to put whole rice to cook with the 
hen's broth or with almond  milk, thus you will have what is called engolée [“
gobs”]."

ended up as a  sugary pudding.
 
On the other hand, I'm just reading Barbara Ketcham Wheaton's "Savoring the 
 Past" and she writes that La Varenne included recipes that remained  
fundamentally Medieval. But one would have to be very careful in picking through  
La Varenne to choose the ones that were. And the simple name of a dish is a 
very  poor guide as to how much it resembles its ancestors.
 
So it's doable, I suppose. But fraught with possibilities for drifting out  
of period. And certainly you'd want to make your reasoning clear in using 
these  in any context where people actually cared.


Jim  Chevallier
www.chezjim.com


"Making Early Medieval  food"
http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2014/01/making-early-medieval-food.html

In  a message dated 1/29/2014 5:03:32 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,  
alysk at ix.netcom.com writes:
I'm having a discussion with someone about using  cookery 
books which were printed after 1600 and whether they can be  considered 
"period" or not.