SCA cooking judgement
Aug. 30th, 2007 04:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyjadwigaan interesting point that I've been thinking about lately, because I've been reading books with other people's interpretations of pre-1650 recipes in them again.
In the SCA-cooks world, we try to limit ourselves to recipes that are fully documented, specifically ones that start with a known, extant recipe written down before 1650, and which we 'redact' (i.e., recreate in modern measurements) as exactly as we can and with great care to ingredients.
But I find myself fussing in certain ways about what people do in their redactions and in their service, and in different ways about what I do, and what corner-cutting or accomodations to modern life I find acceptable for me to do.
I, for instance, tend to fuss about modern spicing and modern expectations of textures being accomodated in redacting and menu choices. But then I smack myself about serving modern crudites in my dayboards, and my tendency to serve certain sauces to be eaten with bread. (I haven't found good sauce on bread documentation, though many of the veggies I serve in sauce are meant to be served OVER bread, such as buttered worts...)
And then there's the drinks. Infusions of herbs and jalabs of sugar syrup are very popular in my kingdom, and I've helped to make them so. But I wonder if anyone routinely drank cold mint tea or cold lavender tea rather than small beer or small mead? What about my lemon-ginger syrup jalab? I serve that at events, and people think I'm being very
period-- but I made that recipe up, using the proportions in a modern sekanjabin recipe, and I have to keep admitting it. That recipe has escaped out into the SCA cooking world and has a separate existence. People think it is period because they've had it at feasts that were full of redactions from period recipes.
I've served Vanilla pizelles in place of period wafers with something, because that's what I had time and people would eat, and comforted myself with the idea that Vanilla is the modern equivalent of rosewater. But my pizelles weren't from a period recipe, and they had vanilla in them!
And yet, I'm still cranky at Constance Hieatt because in Pleyn Delit she recommends allspice in a recipe, though the allspice can't be documented as a regularly used spice in our period, and because her cameline sauce is based on a completely obscure version, which, if tweaked by unsuspecting cooks, comes out as a raisin-nut stuffing...
Do I hold a double standard? Am I really judging my work by similar, if not the same, standards I judge others? I've served bananas at a dayboard, and will do it again. Is it right for me to complain so bitterly when someone serves Bigos/Hunter Stew with tomatoes in it at a feast?
In the SCA-cooks world, we try to limit ourselves to recipes that are fully documented, specifically ones that start with a known, extant recipe written down before 1650, and which we 'redact' (i.e., recreate in modern measurements) as exactly as we can and with great care to ingredients.
But I find myself fussing in certain ways about what people do in their redactions and in their service, and in different ways about what I do, and what corner-cutting or accomodations to modern life I find acceptable for me to do.
I, for instance, tend to fuss about modern spicing and modern expectations of textures being accomodated in redacting and menu choices. But then I smack myself about serving modern crudites in my dayboards, and my tendency to serve certain sauces to be eaten with bread. (I haven't found good sauce on bread documentation, though many of the veggies I serve in sauce are meant to be served OVER bread, such as buttered worts...)
And then there's the drinks. Infusions of herbs and jalabs of sugar syrup are very popular in my kingdom, and I've helped to make them so. But I wonder if anyone routinely drank cold mint tea or cold lavender tea rather than small beer or small mead? What about my lemon-ginger syrup jalab? I serve that at events, and people think I'm being very
period-- but I made that recipe up, using the proportions in a modern sekanjabin recipe, and I have to keep admitting it. That recipe has escaped out into the SCA cooking world and has a separate existence. People think it is period because they've had it at feasts that were full of redactions from period recipes.
I've served Vanilla pizelles in place of period wafers with something, because that's what I had time and people would eat, and comforted myself with the idea that Vanilla is the modern equivalent of rosewater. But my pizelles weren't from a period recipe, and they had vanilla in them!
And yet, I'm still cranky at Constance Hieatt because in Pleyn Delit she recommends allspice in a recipe, though the allspice can't be documented as a regularly used spice in our period, and because her cameline sauce is based on a completely obscure version, which, if tweaked by unsuspecting cooks, comes out as a raisin-nut stuffing...
Do I hold a double standard? Am I really judging my work by similar, if not the same, standards I judge others? I've served bananas at a dayboard, and will do it again. Is it right for me to complain so bitterly when someone serves Bigos/Hunter Stew with tomatoes in it at a feast?
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Date: 2007-08-31 12:40 am (UTC)And yes, people may not have drank the syrup drinks that we do, but we can't serve beer or mead--or at least not bought with SCA funds. Another practicality that our ancestors didn't have to consider.
And yes, that hunter's stew should have been complained about. Also the chocolate volcano cakes that were served as a desert at the same feast.