The Red Kaganate

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Period, Ethnic, and Traditional Cooking by Dr. David D. Friedman This is an excerpt from Dr. David D. Friedman's collection of materials on medievalism "Cariadoc's Miscellany". Dr. Friedman's full collection of articles is online at Recreational Medievalism - http://www.best.com/~ddfr/Medieval/Medieval.html. It should be noted that Dr. Friedman's articles were written for the Society for Creative Anachronisms - a group whose Scope focus is based on Western Europe prior to the 17th century. The Kaganate reader should keep in mind the difference in Scope (the Kaganate being focused on the Turko-Mongol world 560 - 1530 CE). There is some tendency for people in the Society to assume that all ethnic food is period. Thus, for example, "oriental" feasts generally consist of dishes that one would find in a modern Chinese or Japanese restaurant. On the same principle, traditional or "peasant" cooking is sometimes included in feasts, even when there is no evidence that the particular dishes were made in period. The assumption is a dangerous one; America is not the only place where things change over time. The fact that a dish was made by your grandmother, or even that she says she got it from her grandmother, may be evidence that the dish is a hundred years old; it is not evidence that it dates from before 1600. While traditional societies may appear very old-fashioned to us, there is ample evidence that such societies in general, and their cooking in particular, change over time. Potatoes are an important part of traditional cooking in Ireland, and tomatoes in Italy. Yet both are New World vegetables; they could not have been used before 1492, and were not in common use in Europe until a good deal later than that. If we had no sources for medieval recipes, foreign or traditional dishes would be more suited to our feasts than hamburgers and french fries or Coke and pizza; even if they are not actually medieval, they at least help create the feeling that we are no longer in our normal Twentieth Century world. Similarly, if we had no sources for period dance, modern folk dances would fit into an event better than disco dancing. Since we do have sources for both period recipes and period dances, there seems no good reason to use out-of-period substitutes.