[Sca-cooks] Assumptions in modern scholarship

[Galefridus Peregrinus]

Many of you know that I’ve been studying non-bread wheat-based foods for 
the past couple of years. I’ve recently bumped my head against something 
frustrating in the modern scholarship of the field. As best as I can 
tell, nobody has discovered any solid data to indicate how such things 
as bulgur or similar cracked wheat foods were made, either in antiquity 
or the medieval period. Rather, the scholarly consensus appears to 
assume that the way it’s done in contemporary rural villages in the 
modern Near East is the way it was done hundreds or even thousands of 
years ago. I have thus far seen almost no evidence cited to support this 
assumption; nevertheless, it appears to be held in one form or another 
nearly universally.



I’d like to know whether any in the food and cooking community have run 
into anything similar in your research, and what (if anything) you did 
to get beyond such assumptions. I’d be especially interested in hearing 
from others who might have studied grains and cereals.



-- Galefridus