Was having a visit with some fellow historic re-enactors last Saturday, well, a work weekend actually. But after the smelter was built, and we were sitting around, post-work, and pre-dinner, the topic of historic food came up.
There has been a discussion recently on a re-enactor list about food allergies, and how to work around them for feasts. Several times I almost made my own contribution to the conversation, and then deleted it. On the one hand, I tend to only be willing to go as far as denoting meat and non-meat dishes in a menu. I’m far too afear’d of the complex issues of food allergies to even feel comfortable giving assurances about something I’ve prepared by myself in my own kitchen, let alone in a rented kitchen with other helpers. Particularly true, as I learn more and more about all the variations of allergies. And unexpected links and molecular similarities… Eek! It just gets way too tricksy.
But that led us both to comment how on the one hand it becomes very difficult to try to reproduce any of the food from varying periods in history with any kind of attempt at veracity. And on the other hand, how it seems that not many people are even trying anymore.
In fact, I’m starting to wonder if historic cooking is becoming a thing of the past! (Now doesn’t that start to sound like something Carrie Bradshaw would be typing?)
When I first started in this whole re-enactoring thing (long, long ago and reasonably far away) we didn’t have a lot of resources. There was Pleyn Delit. And….hmmm… maybe there was Pleyn Delit. Certainly that was one of the most available books.
It wasn’t even till I’d been in Ontario for a time that others even crossed my path, though I was already on the lookout for them. But perhaps we would have been excused for using the same recipes again and again. Or filling in gaps with something conjectural, just to flesh out the menu.
But there are so many new places to turn to now for easily available information. I ended up having to move my historical cookery book collection out of my kitchen bookshelves because they take up so much more room now. And I don’t can’t afford to collect even a fraction of what is out there.
But it seems we were doing more historic cooking when we had fewer recipes to choose from. Instead, it’s appeared over the last few years, that ‘ethnic’ cookery has replaced any use of historic cookbooks. (Where once we could have pointed that finger at ‘traditional’ recipes as standing in for real history.) And recently, even ethnic food seems to be giving way to what more resembles fairly ordinary restaurant food. ???
V.
2 comments:
While I don't think preparation of period food is old fashioned, certainly in many circles it has gone out of fashion.
I'm assuming you're primarily referencing SCA feasts, where for some very long time food has been either pseudo-period or tending toward modern ethnic or gourmet. It's what I cut my teeth on in that crowd, but quickly discovered what was accepted at feasts was in fact not what would have been served historically. And so my own personal journey into period cookery.
There is a similar problem in any historical re-enactment group, whether you're portraying Norse settlers in Greenland, or War of 1812 camp follower.
I think the difficulty lies not only in ignorance, but often in the reasons why people are at a re-enactment. For many women, who most often are the cooks, it's a case of 'I came because my husband did." And so they fill in the time. They don't like cooking. At home they use boxed and faux food, and have no connection whatever to the food process.
In order to be interested in period food, you have to at least have not only a love of food, but a love of cooking, little say a love of discovery and experimentation. It's rare indeed when you have a combination of all of these.
If you do find that combination, it's unlikely the cook is going to want to, on a regular basis, prepare period food, in a period fashion, for numbers of people. I know I burned myself out doing that over the course of about six years. And in serving said period food, you have to have an appreciate audience, which very often you don't. Food allergies. Picky eaters. People who haven't a clue there's anything else to shove down their gullets besides hotdogs and KD. Nothing more frustrating for the period cook than to have spent months researching and testing recipes, using all the correct equipment and the correct technologies, presenting said period food in the correct fashion and service, than to have some food-illiterate moron complain they don't like lamb, or whatever it is you've presented them with.
Let's face it, actually going through the process of historic food preparation is an arduous journey. That's not to say it isn't fun. It is! But there is a lot of planning and work involved.
I'll lay you odds there are more people pursing historic foodways in the privacy and control of their own backyards than there are on the re-enactment site. I know even for myself, although I no longer do the re-enactment circuit, about once a year I still dig out the gear, research some recipes, and have a play day.
Ok so I recognize we're not the normal crowd, but I hate cooking - I really do. However, I have cooked a feast - and a period one at that, and I generally cook at pretty well every camping event the group goes to. Then somehow its ok and I enjoy it.
Anne and I usually take some reasonable amount of time beforehand to come up with a menu that is reasonably doable (as far as historically is concerned) and then we figure out how to make it workable for our group.
We don't have an easy group to cook for. We have one onion allergy, one death by nuts allergy, one dairy allergy, one death by meat allergy, and one of our regular guests in camp is allergic to gluten.
This changes how we prepare the food but often not the content. We still work to have something that is period and edible by everyone. And the newer historical cookbooks are a great help in that regard because they provide wonderfully diverse suggestions that are/can be acceptable to a modern palette.
And yes I do tend towards eastern foods. I also do have a number of period references for eastern foods. The wonderful luxury about a persona who hangs around the Mediterranean, is the availability of olives, citrus fruits, dates etc. And the wonderful thing about a later period persona is yes I can indeed incorporate small amounts of things that weren't known about in the time of the Vikings.
But, in my experience in the SCA, the food quality and type has gone in waves. I distinctly remember a rose petal soup that was completely unpalatable, but also I remember a feast that was nothing but meat because somehow the cook was convinced that that was appropriate. I have seen, or tasted, that the historical authenticity of the food we're served has gone up and down as time has gone on, and this is currently, for the most part, a down time.
Those of us who make period food keep plugging away assuming that when someone leaves one of our tables and goes somewhere else and brags about the food they were served, someone might come by and ask questions. It wouldn't be the first time.
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