Workshop

I am back at the Lofoten viking museum for a week and their great festival (http://www.lofotr.no/) where will give a few lectures and hold two workshops. It is still pssible to join the workshops that will take place on thursday and friday. SO if you should happen to be nearby you are welcome to join.

The downside of being here is that I will not have time to update the blog properly.

A pause from the renaissance.

At the moment I am on my way to a stoneageevent to make a cooking pit and roast some hazelnuts at Ekehagen (http://www.ekehagen.se) so I might not be able to overlap the backlog this weekend. On the other hand, there might be a stoneage update among all this modern food.

Ovens III

Two days later I was back on the museum and while I was displaying the 17th century kitchen I opened the oven realising that it was still hot inside.

Though I have been planning to cook dishes using the residual heat, I may be able to make more use of the oven than I originally planned. This long slow heat might be optimal for drying fruits. The methods for doing do are mainly found in 18th century cookbooks, but there is a brief mention of this in a Dutch cookbook from the 16th century.

Start of the renaissance summer of 2011

My manorial cooking experience will start with a tournament event at the manor Glimmingehus. However, during the event I will mainly be cooking some small tasting platter rather than doing actual experiments. Still you are welcome to come out and see me cooking.

Some thoughts in preparation for my renaissance experiments

The experiment on Glimmingehus this summer will, although limited in time, try to cover a few teoretical and practical questions and hopefully provide me with some more insights into the physical limitations or possabilities that a renaissance kitchen will provide. A secondary aim of the project is to try to recreate the cuisine of a Scandinavian manor in the early 16th century, from the everyday meal to the festive menu.

The recipes used for the trials will primarily be from cookbooks from mid 15th century to mid 16th century in north west Europe (i.e German and Dutch collections of recipes). In addition I will look into literature from renaissance Scandinavia in order to gain some extra inspiration to the tastes and preferences of the area of the time. I’ll start with a disclaimer though – the reconstructed kitchen is more or less a rural kitchen from the baroque period rather than the renaissance, however the kitchen techniques did not change much wy I can use it without distorting the studies to much.

For the more practical aspects of the project I will look closer on a few selected topics that have interested me for som time. The oven: I find this perhaps one of the more interesting features in the renaissance kitchen.

The dome-shaped wood-fired oven requires a few special considerations. What was the strategy in fireing it? How will I learn to know when it is hot enough…for different kind of dishes? What are the limitations and width of dishes made in the oven? Beside the obvious use of the oven – for bread – pastries and pies were common dishes made in the ovens. However only a few recipes remains for what could have been the dough of the actual pastry. I need to execute a few trials in order to find a correlation between the descriptions of pies and the dough recipes.

Spitroasting; Though I performed a few spitroasting experiments last summer, the actual spits were constructed somewhat differently during this period when compared to the Viking Age. Has the changed shape changed the amount of work one need to put into spitroasting. Are the recipes suggesting a different way of using the spits?

Frying pans: In many of the recipe collections from the early renaissance one can notice an increased use of the frying pan. Both the finds and the descriptions in the recipes suggest that the pans were made with a rathe high rim as most dishes are semi-deep fried. Further the one swedish find we have from the period seem to suggest that the pan were held or just resting by the handle rather than resting ontop of the fire. This suggest that the pans were used rather quickly. Using the pans with these limitations will have some impact on my interpretation of the actual dishes.

Boiling and sauces; It is my assumption that the use of different pots and cauldrons for different uses are quite pronounced during the more complex cuisine of the late medieval and renaissance periods. The copper kettles were probably mainly used to boil meat, while the smaller pots of pottery where rather used for boiling sauces and the final products.

Taste and dishes: A majort part of the project will be to find those dishes that could represent the tastes of this region. As I want to include also the everday life, some non culinary sources wil have to be used. The actual choice of dishes will be compiled as the project progresses,in order to adapt to insights and limitations that may appear.

The experiments of this summer.

Slowly the plans for this summer are unfolding themselves, though I am still waiting to hear if I got some money for a few Viking age boiling experiments.

However the theme of this summer will be 15th century manor cuisine as I will be working at Glimmingehus (http://www.raa.se/cms/extern/en/places_to_visit/glimmingehus/glimmingehus_the_medieval_manor.html) where I will be reconstructing recipes from the 15th and 16th century. This will be done in a reconstructed 16th-17th century kitchen

The main plan is to use dutch and german sources from 1450-1550 – mainly Sabina Welserin, but if anyone have a good suggestion I could be looking into that aswell. The cooking will be done infront of the tourists so anyone passing through the manor are welcome to investigate my cooking experiments.

Preparations for the summer

A new season is closing in and I am searching for means to continue the experiments this summer. At the moment I am looking into museums that woud be interested to hire me to do  public food experiments, for a month or three.

Any suggestions?

Creating Viking age recipes and pondering reconstructions in general

Quite some time has passed since my last few entries. I guess I’ve been mainly occupied with writing rather than cooking lately. Anyway, a few days ago I had a discussion here in the café about the approach to historical reconstructions.

 

In short one can say that the extremes range from the so called A-copies in the museum – in which every detail is copied including the original faults that were unintended by the craftsman –, to reconstructions based on the notion ”it might have been possible”.

 

Generally speaking, when working with medieval, renaissance or ancient roman food, I tend to favour the former approach – trying to follow the recipes or descriptions as close as possible. However, from the Viking age we are limited to archaeological remains of the food and cooking equipment, and some scarce descriptions in later or continental texts, so I would have to reconsider.

 

While the anything goes approach is used to justify anything from pancakes or eggs and bacon for breakfast to more fanciful ideas, as the notion that since they went to the American continent one could have encountered/imported …. [insert any unlikely foodproduct here], the strict copying imposes restrictions that are far from historical correct.

 

While the originals and strict copies are important in order to in fact have an idea of the craft it self and to master the techniques it would be ahistorical for any craftsman to only do copies. While it certainly can be up for some debate, I would say that most creativity in crafts in historical times, would be a question of variations within a strict set of rules. This creativity of repetition can possibly be seen in most arts and crafts in any pre- modern setting, and need to be considered when one is trying to work beyond the actual copies.

 

The rules would limit the craftsman in material, patterns, combinations, and not the least techniques. As we are not native to the crafts we are trying to reconstruct we both need to approach the reconstruction from an intellectual point of view in which we break down the craft into an understanding of the limitations, preferences and requirements available and that we appropriate the techniques through repeated experience. I guess this approach is generally how I’d like to see more experimental archaeology.

 

In regards to cooking that would mean that I need both break to understand and appropriate the underlying factors that makes up a dish. While this may allow me to make dishes that could be plausible in a medieval context…it may first and foremost help me when trying to reconstruct a Viking cuisine.

 

Regionality, Even though there are much in common in the Scandinavian area during the Viking age, one has to be aware that there are regional differences, not only in what food is available but also how the food is cooked and what one would prefer – My thoughts about regional differences has to be developed in another post.

 

Ingredients; What food stuff were available at a certain place and time. From the Viking age, I will mainly have to rely on what archaeological finds that are available. However this poses a problem as not all things edible has been eaten at all times, and what we may consider inedible today, may have been consumed in earlier periods. ( A good example is common sorrel( Rumex Acetosa), which today is considered poisonous in most floraes, but were eaten in historical periods.

 

Cooking techniques; As in any craft, what we can make is limited to the techniques available and affordable at the time. Any dish that would require the 19^th century iron stove can be discounted for. But when looking at the techniques of the time one would also have to consider in what contexts different techniques were used. Just because it was known and used in some circumstances, one cannot expect it be readily available. Factors like economy, the craftsmens preferences, local traditions and the inherent limitations of a particular technique has to be considered.

 

Senses; Although taste is the main sense by which we experience food, smell, texture, looks and even sound play an important role for the complete experience of any dish. While these certainly are a result of the preferences of the time, understanding the interaction of the senses and how the foodstuff were combined in order to produce the desired result is of outmost importance if we are to understand how a dish was composed. This is of course almost impossible to come to grips with through archaeology alone, though some may be indicated. Though we can perhaps get an idea of what basic tastes dominated the food, we need consider not only the different sensorical experiences but also the complexity that can be produced through a combination of different tastes, smells etc.

 

Preferences; In a sense the complexity all boils down to the preference of the craftsman, the consumer and of the time in general. However preferences may limit our options even more than the factors above, but should be considered in more general terms rather than individual. Preferences may rule choices beyond the practical and logical, but are important to recognise.

 

Context; the context of an object or in this case the food is extremely important; Who was supposed to consume it? Did it serve any purpose beyond the obvious? Was the dish or object supposed to convey a certain meaning or to include a certain group of people?

Variations in what we can observe will be dependent on the original context. Understanding how the context influences the result is therefore necessary.

 

It is first after we have a thorough understanding of the above that we can start to reconstruct and reinvent objects/dishes/activities. As we lack any remains to give us anything more than just brief glimpses of the Viking Age diet, any attempt at reconstructing or at least making suggestions of a Viking Age cuisine requires us to deconstruct the evidence according to the above scheme.

 

A good attempt at deconstructing the tastes of the Viking Age, was made here. http://vikingfoodguy.com/wordpress/2010/07/10/the-viking-food-aesthetic/

 

 

This said, would I be comfortable with deconstructing and reinventing medieval dishes? No, although we have a far better understanding of the medieval cuisine, I feel that it is far to complex for me to start doing so just yet. It is possible that one should have the same view of Viking Age food, while perhaps not as complex as the medieval cuisine it cannot be said to lack complexity. However, the lack of any proper surviving dishes, makes this approach more a way to understand and visualise theories about the period.

 

One should point out though, and this is important, in working with “what-may-have-beens” we run the risk of creating images and new truth that are spread without context.

 

 

Festival and return to reality

At the moment the festival is raging by the museum and I am up to my ears in cooking chaos. During the festival and the days of returning home after the festival I’ll not be able to update my blog nor really answer any comments.  I think that my brain will most likely  be returned to me by the 10th of August,  so I’ll get back to any questions after that.

Advert

Though I am a bit vary of taking advantage of people, I am offering for one or two people to work as slaves for me. Or more accuratly; during the festival here I am going to cook constantly. If you are going here and have an interest in food you may be able to hang around, give a hand and sort of doing the apprentice kind of thing while I am cooking. Well I guess the deal is hang out in the kitchen, give a hand if you want to and just generally discuss food with me.