So, my friend Kerri was out at the Pennsic War this time around (yes, I’m jealous), and shopping is nearly as big a sport there as whacking your buddies with a stick. She came across this book, purporting to be a collection of Transylvanian recipes, history, and such.<\/p>\n
Of course, my one advantage to being not at Pennsic is I have way easier Internet access, and I was able to find the same book for less on Amazon.com. So I ordered it, and have started reading.<\/p>\n
So far, it’s been educational, but not in the way you might think. It was written in 1984-1985, and it’s full of good reminders. First of all, fellow historical re-creationists, remember that books are not AUTOMATICALLY your friends. Just because it’s in print doesn’t make it true.<\/p>\n
Our author here has espoused a belief that Transylvanian cooking is one of the foundational cuisines in the world. Oooookay. He’s also convinced China had an influence on early Transylvanian cooking…based entirely on the “fact” that early China and post medieval Transylvania both had a fondness for little hot peppers…and as far as I know, they’re not the same species of pepper.<\/p>\n
And…the recipes. I’ve barely started looking at them yet, but I have spotted some things that are similar to the some of the dishes in The Science of Cooking…but it’s really important and educational to remember that in such a book “really old recipe” doesn’t mean medieval, it means from Gramma’s 3×5 cards tucked into a book somewhere.<\/p>\n
What’s been good so far? Maps, discussion of geography, and some of the ethnic composition of the Transylvanian region. I’m hoping there’s more solid history (and, maybe, a bibliography?). More hopes…if I can see descriptions of food items that I can link to The Science of Cooking, I can maybe get more clues about items I only have vague descriptions of. Like pogasca and some of the foods identified as cakes.<\/p>\n
Okay, got more to read. More later. And, as soon as I get the chance to try it, the octo-lutefisk!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So, my friend Kerri was out at the Pennsic War this time around (yes, I’m jealous), and shopping is nearly as big a sport there as whacking your buddies with a stick. She came across this book, purporting to be a collection of Transylvanian recipes, …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,10],"tags":[9,6],"class_list":["post-306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-medieval-cooking","category-other-cooking","tag-cooking","tag-transylvanian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308,"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions\/308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fibergeek.com\/leathernotebook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}