What is a period recipe, and a period redaction? Ask a lot of cooks, and get a lot of answers. Some folks claim that part of redacting a period recipe is adapting it to the modern world, assuming that period cooks would have adapted period receipts just as we do today. Other people would add ingredients that were known in period to a recipe that calls for them.

There seems to be a prevalent belief that there is nothing wrong with deviating from a period recipe, as long as you follow the basic pattern and use period ingredients. This idea seems especially prevalent for recipes that don't meet modern standards of taste - for instance the mix of honey and pepper in many recipes. The purpose of this essay is to try to convince cooks to think differently about this philosophy of substitution.

We do not, and can not, know exactly what our period ancestors were thinking, or how they thought. It is very unsafe to generalize over period. For example, in the late period era of Elizabeth, it was indeed all the rage for the English to adopt the outlandish styles of the Continent. But, at other times and places during period, the adoption of outlander ideas and styles would have been anathema. It's dangerous to accurate re-creation to claim that they did. We do not know when, where, and how they would have adapted receipts. There is some counter evidence that recipes would have been adapted, since some receipts appear in series of period cookbooks, essentially unchanged over many hundreds of years.

As another point, even if they were going to adapt receipts, would they adapt them as we do today? For an example, at some of the times and places in period, there were issues of balancing the four humors, a sort of twisted phlogiston theory. Would this receipt be considered one where adding onions or garlic is appropriate? Which of the four humors and temperaments do such pungent vegetables represent?

Before I would be comfortable making adjustments to period recipes, and calling the result compatible with period, I feel I would need to know not only the receipts, but the philosophical theories of the area, the growing seasons, what foods were imported and which were not, and a giant host of facts, which very few of us can say we've mastered. If I am redacting a recipe in a book where other recipes include onions and garlic, it does not necessarily mean that I can add onions and garlic to -this- recipe. Why, for example, if they were known and used in other recipes, didn't they appear in this receipt? Until I can answer that question with some degree of confidence, I am not fit to question. Other cooks, of course, may choose otherwise.

But, since there are so many wonderful, and untested redactions to be done, I would rather turn my hand to cooking them as they lie. Until I've exhausted the list of receipts out there, I have plenty of good, period, research left to do. Most redactions take hours to understand and create, and more time to cook. I don't expect to ever run out of things to experiment with.

The point remains that many cooks (and feasters) seem to feel that some period recipes are unacceptable to the modern palate. The vast and overwhelming majority of receipts I have tried are tasty and delicious, and quite appealing to the modern palate and stomach. In fact, when the end result of a redaction attempt I've made is not tasty, it has invariably resulted from my own mistakes.

Most of the receipts I've read (but haven't tried yet) look quite reasonable. Even Apicius receipts from the Roman era, while looking quite unusual, taste splendid. The sole exception I can think of is a sauce from (I think) Al Bagdadi, that involves rotting barley for several months, and is supposed to be quite carcinogenic if made correctly. But there is a receipt in that cookery book for a quick version of that sauce, that is both tasty and safe when used as directed. Even the deer liver with honey sauce from Das Buch von Gutte Speise that my friend Caterina has translated, was pretty good... if not to every modern person's taste. (If there was any problem with the recipe at all, it was in-experience in preparing liver.)

Some people might make the case, that, given an economy of scarcity, you'd cook what you had, and you'd like it. That may well be true: but our surviving receipts are from the uppermost classes, whose lives would not be heavily affected by scarcity. The lower classes might adapt their recipes, but we don't know what those recipes really were.

In summary.

• We don't know much about how our ancestors thought.

• We don't know that they did adapt any particular recipe.

• We don't know how they would have, even if they did.

• We would need to know a lot before we could make intelligent choices.

• Most period food is very good, just as written.

• The recipes we have were the ones least likely to be adapted for reasons of scarce resources.

It's seductive (and typically done in the Society) to think that they would have done exactly what we would do: but we have decent evidence this was not true. What we don't know, and can't know without some seriously exhausting research, is what adaptations they would have made, and what they would never have considered.

For example, if I were to modify an asparagus recipe, I might make a cream sauce with a roux. I don't know of any receipt that used roux, although plenty added flour, or butter. Most sauces I know were thickened with eggs or bread crumbs, or both. I might flavor a stew with Worcestershire sauce. So might Apicius, because he used fish based sauces. For the bulk of period, they didn't seem to use a fish sauce, as far as I know. But, technically, since Apicius manuscript survived from Roman days, they could have, right?

Thus while I agree that period cooks must have occasionally adapted recipes. I disagree, totally, that we can easily guess what kinds of changes they would have made. Most Society cooks tend to modify recipes without due regard for period. So how do I deal with the fact that there are recipe books out there that show different adaptations of the same recipe? These are marvelously informative. More than one way to make a recipe by the same cook, or the same recipe slowly mutating over time, are very instructional. But that isn't license to go too far.

So how, as SCA cooks, do we deal with the concept that our entries in cooking competitions, while totally accurate, may be discarded because they do not meet the taste and expectations of the judges? For example, at a Brewers Symposium I attended, one gentleman of great note made a bragot. It tasted terrible. But the receipt for it was clear, and he'd followed it exactly. His point was, that good and authentic period brew might just taste unlike what we are used to. In retrospect, I think that I liked the bragot more than I realized: but it did taste funny. It didn't match my expectations. This can be a problem with judging, not with cooking. I believe that, when judges use their modern tastes to judge authentic receipts, they err.

Yet how can we attempt a truly period recreation without the kitchen equipment available to our forebearers. After all, I don't have a wood burning stove in my kitchen, or a brick oven. I often cook food in cast iron or stainless steel. It's not always possible to do your own translation from the original, and we sometimes end up using someone else's translation. Some ingredients need to be weighed instead of measured, and the appropriate equipment is not available. It is time to introduce Cariadoc's maxim, again. "Don't let the best be the enemy of the good." In other words, do the best you can, and acknowledge errors and shortcuts. For a concrete example, here is a direct quotation from a receipt I've submitted to have published in a cooks newsletter: "This dish calls for many spring greens. I could not find most of those, and therefore chose to use other, more available, but still period, greens."

When I redact, I do the best I can, and I carefully document what shortcuts, errors, omissions, and changes I make. I document the choices I made, and the methods I used. I cite my sources, and other documentation I used to make my decisions. More than this, I cannot do. For another example, here is my "explanation" for my redactions for a cheese tart:

ORIGINAL:

Auter Tartus.
Take faire nessh chese that is buttry, and par hit, grynde hit in a morter; cast therto faire creme and grinde hit togidre; temper hit with goode mylke, that hit be no thikker (th)en rawe creme, and cast thereto a litul salt if nede be; And thi chese be salte, caste thereto neuer a dele; colour hit with saffron; then make a large coffyn of faire paste, & lete the brinkes be rered more (th)en an enche of hegh; lete (th)e coffyn harden in (th)e oven; (th)en take it oute, put gobettes of butter in the bothom thereof, And caste the stuffe there-to, and caste of butter in the bothom thereof, And caste the stuffe there-to, and caste peces of buttur there- vppon, and sette in (th)e oven with-oute lydde, and lete bake ynowe, and then cast sugur thereon, and serue it forth. And if (th)ou wilt, lete him haue a lydde; but (th)en thi stuff most be as thikke as Mortrewes."

EXPLANATION:

I considered several cheeses, and decided that brie was soft as butter, and unsalted pretty much. I chose to use a commercial pie crust, instead of a coffin, partially for time reasons, and partially because I figured most folks would be more comfortable with a tart in modern form, than a cheese and butter spread that you would have to scoop out of an inedible coffin. I chose regular creme instead of heavy creme, since from what I understand, modern whole milk is thinner than untreated milk, and heavy creme is extremely heavy in comparison to anything but the thickest cream. I chose to eliminate the bottom layer of butter, since a commercial pie crust has more fats in it than a period coffin would.

What I will not allow myself to do, is to let one (necessary) shortcut justify unnecessary ones. That I don't have a clay oven, does not mean I will add garlic to a receipt that doesn't call for it. I always provide the source (Harleian MS 4016, #30), the original receipt, the reasons for what I did, the final redaction, and comments on the quality of the result, what errors I might have made, how it could be better, etc. I learned this from our local cook's guild, many years ago, and I like it. We cannot justify making changes based upon our modern tastes and knowledge. We are in the Society: and we aim to re-create our ancestors from a time and place. If we are to do that, we should start with what we know is true, and only modify it for our health, safety, or when we know with as much perfection as possible that what we wish to do is what they would do.