| Cooking with Katja | ||
| How do I find the answer to some of the food questions I’m asked? In essence, how do I research something? That question has come up from time to time, so I thought it would be fun to explain how research on some subjects can be at least started on the Internet and why it’s valuable to have more than just a good library at your fingertips. | ||
| Bryn contacted me a few days before Twelfth Night, telling me that Rowan, the head cook for the upcoming event feast, wanted to resurrect the old SCA custom of hiding a coin or token in a bun or cake so that the gentle who found it would be named the King of Misrule. | ||
| I well remember this from the first couple of feasts I attended, but I hadn’t seen it done in almost two decades. Bryn had the same thought as I did: was it a documentably period practice or just one of the various early SCA customs we later realized were actually Victorian (like eating in the dark by candlelight) or otherwise not common during our period of study? Rowan was busy with last-minute food preparations for the feast; could we document this for her? | ||
| Since I was at work at the time that Bryn contacted me, what could I do from there, quickly, to verify or debunk the practice? I didn’t have an immediate answer and I couldn’t think of a specific academic or SCA article off the top of my head that explored the subject. I figured checking out Twelfth Night and Carnivale customs would be a good start. | ||
| Although Google can be an extremely valuable tool for beginning a research project, just searching for “hidden food” revealed links only on allergy concerns while “coins in food” or “king of misrule” resulted in nothing relevant. Wikipedia did contain a decent, brief history of the “lord of misrule” dating back to ancient Roman times, but didn’t mention anything about coins hidden in food; the entry on Twelfth Night explained only on the Shakespeare play. I concluded that basic search engines weren’t going to be of any help here. | ||
| So, I went to more food history-specific archives and search engines: www.Florilegium.org. A collection of SCAdian articles and postings from various listserves on lots of medieval history subjects, it’s often a great way to begin a search and determine what sources exist (although not every file or comment contains citations, so this must be used cautiously). To my surprise, it was a complete dead end. Another excellent repository of SCA feasts and food articles, www.GodeCookery.com, had tons of valuable information on food history but nothing on this subject. | ||
| Next, I used links on the Æthelmearc Cooks Guild website to quickly review a number of academic websites for articles and online translations of period manuscripts: | ||
| Still nothing. Hmm. Okay, this is going to be a challenge… I told Bryn I’d have to check out my books when I got home that night. | ||
| What’s the best paper source for beginning a food history project? The Oxford English Dictionary is great for determining the first use of any word and Alan Davidson’s Oxford Companion to Food contains wonderfully detailed entries solely on culinary subjects. Neither had anything on Twelfth Night food or food with coins hidden inside. Okay, now I’m really intrigued and bordering on stumped… | ||
| Fast and Feast by Bridget Ann Henisch covers almost everything known about English dining customs during the Middle Ages. Terence Scully’s The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages covers all the bases on medieval cooking techniques and food. Were either helpful? Nope. I skimmed through Roy Strong’s Feast: A History of Grand Eating, but even that treatise on dining throughout the centuries failed to help here. | ||
| With trepidation, I consulted my least-favorite source: Madeleine Pelner Cosman’s Fabulous Feasts. A book infamous for text that ranges from overly general to highly detailed, a lack of footnotes or other clear citations, and completely inaccurate, untested, and undocumented redactions, it’s one that I personally despise for causing so many to think period food tastes nasty. Like many SCAdians, it was one of the first food history books I bought simply because it was easily available and I didn’t know any better. Although the recipes should be ripped out and tossed, I know that some of the text does contain decent information, specifically on feast customs. So, I flipped through it. I was almost relieved that it did not help. I really did not want to tell Rowan to check out FF… | ||
| I thumbed through my reprints of Forme of Cury and A Proper Newe Booke of Cokerye, 14th and 16th Century English food manuscripts. Nothing jumped out and I didn’t have the time to do a lengthy, thorough review of all the manuscripts I have. What could I do in the time I had? Even if I had more time, I’d gone through all the major analytical sources I have for starting a research project… did I even think I could find it with the materials I had? What could I do? | ||
| Simple. Go “above my head.” Contact someone else who has better resources and more research experience. | ||
| In other words, go the library. Or, in this instance, go to a librarian! | ||
I know of a lady in the MidRealm, from the SCA-Cooks list, who is a former research librarian and has been studying medieval food history for over 30 years. She uses academic search engines that folks who don’t work for universities or libraries can’t access, plus owns hundreds and hundreds of food history texts. She tracks down research questions on the list all the time, and I had met her at a food history symposium several years ago. So, I emailed THL Johnnae llyn Lewis, explained the timing and question, listed which sources I’d consulted, and asked if she knew of any sources that would verify or debunk this practice? |
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| In a matter of hours, Johnnae had uncovered three pre-1600 citations for Twelfth Night cakes baked with a bean, pea, or coin inside, plus more dating through the 17th Century. I thanked her heartily, told Bryn the good news, then printed off the best source to show Rowan the next day so that she could follow through with her plans, confident that she was sharing a custom that actually existed from our period of study. | ||
| The point to this column? Everyone hits a rock wall in his or her research at some point and doesn’t know how to proceed. Libraries and subject experts exist to share their knowledge. Ask them to help… and don’t forget to thank them and pay them fair attribution! <smile> | ||
| “…on Twelfth day euery house makes a cake of fine white fluore, honie, pepper, and …, and then they create a king as followeth. The mistris of the house is she that … the cake, into the which when she kneads it, she puts a small peece of siluer, then … it vpon the harth, she cuts it into as many peeces as there are persons in the house, … giues to euery one his part: yet there are certaine peeces assigned, first one to Christ, … to the Virgin Marie, and last to the three wise men that came to worship him; and … hese parts are giuen to the poore: he that hath that part wherein the peece of siluer aines, is saluted as king, set in a chaire, and raised vp thrice by the whole companie … great cries of ioy. …” | ||
(Page 565, The estates, empires, & principallities of the world… translated from French by Edw: Grimstone; Author, Avity, Pierre d', sieur de Montmartin, published 1615, London.) |
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