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

[Terry Decker]

What defines "Medieval" or "Renaissance?"  Social change is an evolutionary 
process that does not necessarily follow a universal linear path where it 
can be defined accurately by date.  The "Medieval Period" ends for much of 
Europe in the 16th Century, but a case can be made that it doesn't end in 
Poland and Russia until the 18th Century.  Conversely, the "Renaissance" is 
generally deemed to have started in the 15th Century, often using the handy 
date of 1453 and the fall of Constantinople as a starting point.  The 
historian Peter Burke argues that it actually begins in the 14th Century, 
localized in Florence, Avignon, and a few othe places.

A change in European culinary patterns may trace to 1204 and the Fourth 
Crusade, when the sack of Constatinople left Venice in control of the spice 
trade.  The trade expanded and over time altered spice use in Europe, as is 
reflected in Martino.  The 16th Century Columbian Exchange and the 
Portuguese expansion into the spice trade, which helped cut the cost of 
spices, only accelerated the process.  Simply ignoring the changes of the 
16th Century does not eliminate the changes that were already occurring.

Consider rice, a widely used grain of the "Medieval period."  It was known 
in Antiquity, but was not widely used except as a medicine.  It appears only 
as a thickening agent in Apicius.  Yet by the High Middle Ages it appears as 
the main ingredient in a number of dishes.  The accepted consensus is that 
large scale rice cultivation was introduce to the Mediterranean Basin by the 
Islamic Expansion between the 8th and 10th Centuries.  If one accepts that 
the "Medieval Period" extended from the 5th to the 15th Centuries, then the 
use of rice is a change in medieval cooking similar to the introduction of 
the turkey in the 15th Century.  The introduction of new food stuffs during 
the Islamic Expansion changed cooking, so which is the "true" medieval 
cuisine, that before or after the Arabs?

Whether or not we set simple, hard, fast dates for our game, historic 
reality is far more complex and indeterminate.

Bear


> With the changes in technology and the discovery of the new world,
> European cuisine began to change significantly.  The 16th century
> recipes are different enough from the earlier ones to form a sort of
> transitional cuisine between medieval and modern European.
>
> I know I'm in the minority, but I don't see 16th or 17th century in
> northern Europe as being medieval, regardless of what the SCA corpora
> says.
>
> Of course if you ask someone who specializes in Italian history they'd
> probably tell you that the medieval period ends around 1400.
>
> - Doc