From: ddfr@quads.uchicago.edu (david director friedman)
Subject: Pennsic Cooking, Persona
Reply-To: ddfr@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1992 17:29:20 GMT


"There is a very yummy journey-bread that is period, called Prince
Biskit (well, the recipe was published not long after 1600)."
(Julitta)

The 2nd edn of Hugh Platt, which is the source for Prince Bisuit, is
just after 1600; the first edition is just before 1600. I have not
seen the first edition (the 2nd is the one I included in Volume I of
the cookbook collection), but if, as seems likely, it also contains
the recipe then it is period in the strict sense (published before
1600, rather than just "probably in use" before 1600).

Julitta describes one strategy for eating well at Pennsic. Along
similar lines, Sir Nathan Adelaar of Calontir cooks large quantities
of period food, seals it in seal-a-meals, freezes it, and then dumps
it into a pot of boiling water to heat it. I gather he has fed period
food to Calontir royalty throughout the war using this strategy. One
point he made when discussing the subject at our cooking symposium
was that good coolers are much better at staying cold than cheap ones.

We follow a very different strategy, based on the desire both to be
period and not to spend too much of our limited time at Pennsic
dealing with food. Coolers are not only out of period, they are also
something of a nuisance, since you have to get ice, drain them, etc.
Instead of using a cooler, we bring lots of period nibbles that do
not need refrigeration (cheese in wax, hais, bread, dried fruit,
honey, hulwa, khushkananaj, gingerbrede, nuts, sausage, prince
biscuit, etc.). For drinks we bring sekanjabin and similar period
islamic drinks--syrups which keep forever, and are diluted with water
before drinking. We plan on cooking one or two dinners, to which we
invite everyone in the encampment. Enough other people do the same so
that there is dinner most evenings--and if there is not, we can
always go to the inns.

For dinner, our usual strategy is either to use meat pickled with the
pickled meat recipe in the Miscellany and make some period dish that
is supposed to have vinegar in it (since the meat will taste
vinegary) or to use something based on beans and/or eggs (from the
Coopers' store). One could also do a period noodle dish such as
macrows, which has cheese for the protein. Another strategy people in
the encampment have used is to have someone who is arriving during
the week bring meat and cook it more or less immediately.

One of the things we keep planning to do but have never gotten around
to is to experiment with stockfish, which was a common period
preserved food.

As a general rule, cooking anything complicated for only two or three
people is more trouble than it is worth. Better to invite all your
friends, thus demonstrating the medieval virtue of hospitality--and
getting return invitations later.

"No man is so wealthy that he objects to receiving a gift in exchange
for his gift." (Havamal)

                   Persona and Sensitivity

Fra Tadhg asks "Am I being oversensitive?" with regard to his
reaction to my account of the Anglo Saxon poetry class at Schola. He
may have forgotten that, when I posted the account, I described
Schola explicitly as an event at which classes were taught in
persona. If you come to an event at which you are told that classes
are being taught in persona, it is not reasonable to object to
finding that indeed the classes are being taught in persona--that
what you are getting is not "a class on Anglo Saxon poetry" but "a
(reasonable approximation, given linguistic and other difficulties,
of) a class on Anglo-Saxon poetry as it might have been taught by an
Anglo-Saxon lady." That is like going to what is announced as a
performance of a Middle English play in the original language and
then objecting that you cannot understand it.

There seem to be two different issues involved in this thread. Fra
Tadhg's expressions of offense at such a class being taught seem to
me intolerant and indefensible.  His view that teaching such a
class--more generally, doing things in persona in the sense which I
have advocated and discussed here and elsewhere--is not worth doing
may possibly be defensible, although I do not think he has yet
presented any serious defense of it.

So far as his argument that we would not get very far if we all stuck
to our persona's languages, that is probably true, but it is relevant
to whether being in persona is worth doing only if you think that
nothing is worth doing unless it is worth doing perfectly--a position
I have frequently argued against. 

If Fra Tadhg is really trying to persuade those of us who believe in
persona, rather than merely trying to start a flame war in the
pleasantly flameless environment of the Rialto, he might find it
worth first looking over the essays on persona in the Miscellany--I
expect someone in his area has a copy. He would then be in a better
position to attack the positions I actually hold, and the arguments
with which I defend them.

Cariadoc