[Sca-cooks] Anything going on ?

[Kathleen Roberts]

This sounds so familiar, since I did similarly when looking for pre-1000 Irish food.
Frustrating and fun at the same time.  

Cailte

-----Original Message-----
From: Sca-cooks [mailto:sca-cooks-bounces+karobert=unm.edu at lists.ansteorra.org] On Behalf Of Laura Minnick
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2016 6:53 PM
To: sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Anything going on ?

Ah! Yes, there's Anthimus. He's 6th c. And then there's a huge gap, until you start getting the Anglo-Norman books, etc.

So I've had to improvise. It's sort of a triangulation between several sources. I looked at climate and terrain, and what could be grown in the area. Wrote the German dept of agriculture, told them what I was doing, and they were quite happy to give me info on the growing zones and such, and what will generally grow where. I went through the capitularies and manorial accounts and looked at what they were growing and what livestock they were raising. I found out what was growing seasonally. So I had a good idea of what could be grown in the area, and what I knew that they were growing, which tells me what they ate, just not how.

For how, I looked at the previous books- Roman, Anthimus, etc., so I knew how people before then prepared their food. And I looked at later books to see what had changed, which gave me an idea of the arc, so to speak. Also gleaned other bits from medical documents and such. Case in
point: as an older man, Charlemagne was having periods of ill health (seems to be gastrointestinal), and his doctors insisted that he stop eating roasted meat, and eat boiled meat only. This tells me that people were eating roasted meat- at least the Emperor was! And continued to- basically his reply was that he'd eat what he pleased. (It's good to be the king!) Similar things, like clerics writing about dissolute monks eating rich foods, etc. Even found a letter from Alcuin to an abbot, telling him to not feed so many beans to the monks, lest the results disturb services!

And I also looked at what facilities and tools they had available to work with- after all, they didn't have my kitchen, or even my camp kitchen to work in.

 From there, I put it all together and mixed in a bit of my brain, which admittedly is not medieval, but has been studying medieval food for something like 30 years. I found it interesting that as I've been in the middle of all of this, Giano put out the CA on Frankish food, and to my delight I found that we'd been thinking much along the same lines. We could have easily cooked in each other's kitchen.

Does that answer your question, Your Grace?

Liutgard


On 8/28/2016 9:52 AM, David Friedman wrote:
> Tell us about "Frankish stuff." The only source that occurs to me is 
> Anthimus.
>
>
> On 8/28/16 7:35 AM, Laura Minnick wrote:
>> Well, I'm not doing much at the moment. I'm having some fairly 
>> significant health issues, and spending most of my time dealing with 
>> that.
>>
>> I did go to Egils though, and fed 9 in camp, and... I don't know how 
>> many Saturday night for dinner. Still working on Frankish stuff, and 
>> it went well, except- a major fair with the roast. I don't know what
>> happened- everything was the same- roast, pan, coals- but when I went 
>> to get it out, it mooed at me. I had a small breakdown in the bushes 
>> behind the kitchen, then came back to my horrified helpers, and said 
>> 'Ok, we go on. This is what we're going to do...' and we went on with 
>> dinner, with a revised menu. Everyone was fed and I don't think the 
>> guests knew any different.
>>
>> I also made cheese in camp, which was a first. I got some basic 
>> instructions and recipes from Maeve, hung it up to drip before I left 
>> for market* and then took it down while I was doing  prep (it was 
>> part of the dessert). It worked wonderfully, and I'm likely to do it 
>> again.
>>
>> *I had an idea that I would go into town to the farmer's market and 
>> get my fresh produce there. Didn't work- the produce was lovely, but 
>> about three times the standard supermarket price. I couldn't in good 
>> conscience use our camp's food money that way, so I ended up going on 
>> to the Safeway from there. The only thing I did get was fennel- 
>> fennel is hard to find, and I couldn't be sure it was available at 
>> Safeway. The fennel was gorgeous- firm, fat bulb, brilliant white.
>> and it was very tasty!
>>
>> An Tir September Crown is next weekend, and I'm going, but camping 
>> with #1 daughter, and she's feeding me, so all I have to bring is my 
>> tent and personal stuff. I think it will be nice, being able to 
>> relax, and leave camp without worrying about being on a strict 
>> timetable for meal prep.
>>
>> Liutgard
>>
>>
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