Danelaw-Feast-art - 3/8/07 A 9th Century Anglo-Saxon feast served at the SCA's Market Day at Jorvik event. NOTE: See also the files: Fst-Managemnt-art, Irish-Vik-fst-art, Med-Kitchens-lnks, fd-Norse-msg, pork-msg. mushrooms-msg, custards-msg, Norse-msg. ************************************************************************ NOTICE - This file is a collection of various messages having a common theme that I have collected from my reading of the various computer networks. Some messages date back to 1989, some may be as recent as yesterday. This file is part of a collection of files called Stefan's Florilegium. These files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org I have done a limited amount of editing. Messages having to do with separate topics were sometimes split into different files and sometimes extraneous information was removed. For instance, the message IDs were removed to save space and remove clutter. The comments made in these messages are not necessarily my viewpoints. I make no claims as to the accuracy of the information given by the individual authors. Please respect the time and efforts of those who have written these messages. The copyright status of these messages is unclear at this time. If information is published from these messages, please give credit to the originator(s). Thank you, Mark S. Harris AKA: THLord Stefan li Rous Stefan at florilegium.org ************************************************************************ Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2005 23:31:11 -0400 From: "Lonnie D. Harvel" Subject: [Sca-cooks] Danelaw feast To: Cooks within the SCA Here is my preliminary feast menu for Danelaw. This is predominately a 9th Century Anglo-Saxon feast, though I believe it would be recognized and enjoyed by all living within the area. I have pulled heavily upon the work of Mary Savelli, who in turn pulled heavily upon the work of Ann Hagen and Maggie Black. Period sources include: Anthimus, De obseruatione ciborum, translated by Mark Grant Ælfric, Colloquy, edited by Garmonsway Bald's Leechbook, edited by Cockayne Lacnunga, edited by Grattan and Singer Medicina de quadrupedibus, edited by Vriend Peri Didaxeon, edited by Löweneck Recipes, edited by Cockayne _*A Feast for the Market Day at Jorvik:*_ (The bread, cheese and butter will be served with the feast, not before.) * *Eofor* (stewed boar): Boar, onions, grains of paradise, cinnamon, sage, coriander seed, red wine, salt * *Caulres Wyrtmete* (cabbage salad): Cabbage, spinach, leek, peas, farmers cheese, cider vinegar, oil, salt, pepper * *Leaxes Hlaf* (salmon cakes): Salmon, egg, oatmeal, onion, oil * *Hlaf *(bread): wheat, oat and/or rye bread * *Cyse Syfling* (cheese spread): cottage cheese, cream cheese, white wine vinegar, rose water, salt, pepper * *Hunig Butere* (honey butter): butter, honey * *Ælan Cicen* (grilled chicken): Chicken, oil, cider vinegar, honey, cloves, cinnamon, salt * *Hunigbære Moran* (honey-glazed carrots): Carrots, salt, radishes, butter, honey, cinnamon, mint leaves, cress * *Hwerhwettan Wyrtmete* (cucubmer salad): Cucumbers, onion, salt, pepper, honey, white wine vinegar, water * *Hriõer Smeamete* (beef casserole): Beef, saffron, water, white wine vinegar, oil, breadcrumbs, raisins, dates, honey, salt, pepper, cinnamon, red wine, butter * *Bræder Eofor* (roast pork): Pork, salt, oil, honey, white wine vinegar, white wine, cinnamon, pepper, rosemary, cress, apples * *Beren Briw* (barley pilaf): Barley, radishes, butter, vegetable stock, salt * *Swamma* (mushrooms): Mushrooms, butter, salt, red wine vinegar, sage, thyme * *Peru on Wine* (pears in wine sauce): Pears, red wine, honey, cinnamon, cloves, cumin, pepper * *Flete Estmete* (sour cream custard): Eggs, cottage cheese, sour cream, almond, honey, breadcrumbs, sugar, butter, cinnamon (maybe served with strawberries as well). As I finish working out my redactions, I will post them. Most however are variations on those of Savelli and Hagen whose publications are available so it would be inappropriate for me to post their work. Comments? This is my first early period feast. I do not offend easily, so please comment freely (like that is a problem on this list ;) ). Aoghann Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2005 23:27:01 -0400 From: "Lonnie D. Harvel" Subject: [Sca-cooks] Danelaw feast - Take Two To: Cooks within the SCA Many thanks for all of the feedback, both posted and privately received. Following this message is a somewhat revised version. Some comments... AFAIK, Grains of Paradise (the pepper like substance not cardamom) do not fall into this period and location. When first creating the menu, I made the common learning mistake of substituting an ingredient for a new pet spice that "makes the dish more medieval." I had discovered the mistake, and thought I had changed them all back to pepper. Alas, my guilt is out! :) This is intended to be a rich feast, but I have dropped some of the imported spices from many of the recipes that I did not feel needed them in order to be good. A decision that I believe a period cook would be likely to face. In what dishes will this expensive ingredient show the best? Lard and other animal fats would be more period, but I have chosen to substitute oil for reasons of health. I am curious, what kinds of oils, if any, might have been used for cooking in 9th century "England"? Just curious. I plan to use one of the healthy blends now available, along with some olive oil. I have already lost the richness of the lard. I will probably use a combination of oil and butter in the cooking of the Leaxes Hlaf. A good question was raised about whether rosemary would grow in the Danelaw area. I know that many herbs were used at the time, I just don't know what herbs they were. I am trying to get my hands on one of the Hagen books for guidance. Pointers would be welcome. On spices, I feel confident that cinnamon would have been available and used, though expensive. At this point, it looks like about 4 Tbs for the whole feast. A hefty sum, but I think possible. Comments? At the suggestion of one of the authors, clove is being used in place of bayberry, given the danger of the latter. I do not know how available cloves would have been, but here it is a modern substitution for a period spice now known to be dangerous. After a reminder, I remember a discussion on this list about whether honey and butter were combined and served together. I have decided to serve them separately, and leave it to the good gentles to do as they wish. I want to thank you all for the input so far. I am still working on this, trying to learn what would have be reasonable or possible during this period and at this time. I have also tried to keep to things that would be available the first weekend in October. However, being city born and bred, I have no clear picture. You mean, they didn't have strawberries to decorate their Yule puddings? :) At this point, I see two issues. 1) I may be pushing it with the cinnamon. 2) This is really a big feast. To the latter, this is the first feast being given after the investiture of our new Baron and Baroness. I intend this to be a display of their largesse. Surely a sentiment that would have been held at the time. A Feast for the Market Day at Jorvik: (The bread, cheese and butter will be served with the feast, not before.) * Eofor (stewed boar): Boar, onions, pepper, sage, thyme, coriander seed, red wine, salt * Caulres Wyrtmete (cabbage salad): Cabbage, spinach, leek, peas, farmers cheese, cider vinegar, oil, salt, pepper * Leaxes Hlaf (salmon cakes): Salmon, egg, oatmeal, onion, oil * Hlaf (bread): wheat, oat and/or rye bread * Cyse Syfling (cheese spread): cottage cheese, cream cheese, white wine vinegar, salt, pepper, marjoram, parsley * Hunig (honey): honey * Butere (butter): butter * Ælan Cicen (grilled chicken): Chicken, oil, cider vinegar, honey, cloves, cinnamon, salt * Hunigbære Moran (honey-glazed carrots): Carrots, salt, radishes, butter, honey, mint leaves, cress * Hwerhwettan Wyrtmete (cucubmer salad): Cucumbers, onion, salt, pepper, honey, white wine vinegar, water * Hriõer Smeamete (beef casserole): Beef, water, white wine vinegar, oil, breadcrumbs, apples, dried plums, honey, salt, pepper, cinnamon, red wine, butter * Beren Briw (barley pilaf): Barley, radishes, butter, vegetable stock, salt * Swamma (mushrooms): Mushrooms, butter, salt, red wine vinegar, sage, thyme * Peru on Wine (pears in wine sauce): Pears, red wine, honey, cinnamon, cloves, cumin, pepper * Flete Estmete (sour cream custard): Eggs, cottage cheese, sour cream, hazelnut, cardamom, honey, breadcrumbs, sugar, butter, cinnamon (maybe served with strawberries as well). Aoghann Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 09:02:30 -0400 From: "Lonnie D. Harvel" Subject: [Sca-cooks] Pinch-hitting (was pasties) To: Cooks within the SCA mollirose at bellsouth.net wrote: > Serena is awesome, I understand she stepped up at an event this > weekend? Indeed she is, and indeed she did. Serena had to pinch-hit for me this past weekend at Danelaw. On Friday, while trying to finish the shopping, my back went out. (Lifted too many 40lb bags of donated bread.) I spent the weekend laid out in state. From all accounts, she delivered a magnificent meal to the tables and handled the kitchen as if nothing unusual had transpired. She was able to work with 14 period recipes that were new to her, sort out the pile of ingredients, identify mistakes in my calculations, adapt to ingredients magically disappearing, ovens that kept increasing in temperature, a grill that dumped rust from the lid all over the chicken, all dropped in her lap with less than 24 hours before serving time. This she did not only well, but with grace and humor. In a moment that could have been a disaster, she exhibited a mastery of medieval cookery and the wherewithal to manage both the kitchen and the situation. I am grateful for both her skill and her willingness to serve. Cheers! Aoghann (btw: I passed my doctoral defense yesterday. I was able to stand through my presentation, but had to sit for the rest of it. I am mobile now, but moving slow. I hate growing old, but it beats the alternative.) Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 11:16:15 -0400 From: Barbara Benson Subject: [Sca-cooks] Feast Challanges/Disaster for Stefan (really long) To: Cooks within the SCA Here follows an account of the weekend of the event for the Barony of Bryn Madoc, Meridies called Danelaw 2005. For many months Lord Aoghann had been researching and planning his Viking themed menu for the event. Having come to work in my German kitchen in February he had earned a tremendous amount of Lackey points which I felt indebted to repay by working in his kitchen (as an honor not an obligation). On and off throughout his planning period he occasionally (either directly or through the Cooks List) updated me on how things were going. So going into the feast I had a general idea of what was going to be going on. At one point he had requested the Excel spreadsheets that I use for my feast planning and I had sent them to him. A couple of days before the feast he emailed and requested that I bring some cooking/serving ware that he had seen me use for my feast. He mentioned that he had some custard that he would like to prepare Friday night. So, I packed up about 2/3 of my normal feast prep box and the requested serving ware for the weekend. Planning to spend the vast majority of the event working happily under his direction. Upon arrival at the event (around 7:00 pm) I was approached while I stood in line for troll. The gracious Baroness of Bryn Madoc explained to myself that Aoghann had injured himself and would not be there that evening, and possibly unable to attend the next day. And how did I feel about preparing feast? I said that it sounded like something that needed to be done and that I would serve in whatever capacity was needed. Lord Aoghann had done all of the shopping and sent everything to the site with others. I had a sheaf of recipes and lo and behold several very familiar looking spread sheets. He had modified that which I had sent him to fulfill his own needs (as I expected) but I understood the system. I set about organizing the kitchen in my normal manner, taking inventory of all ingredients and making sure everything that I needed (based on his ingredient lists) was on site. There was a moment of panic when I was unable to locate the pork - but it was unearthed. Once everything was stowed and organized I looked to his schedule for the evening to determine what absolutely had to happen that evening. The first casualties of the situation were the planned subtleties. I believe that there were supposed to be Viking Longships made out of inedible coffin dough - but the details were scarce. There was a recipe for a flour paste, and on the schedule it said make ships and make sails. And that was about it. With my unfamiliarity of the menu, and the staff being many people I had never worked with before I decided that I would not worry about them. If Aoghann was able to make it to the event on the next day, he would need something to do sitting down and that could be it. I was up pretty late, but everything that needed to be done was done. We prepared the Boar Stew and Custards until completely done. And made the marinade to prep the Pork Roasts and get them sitting for the evening. Carrots and Mushrooms were cleaned and chopped. One of the biggest challenges for the evening was making sure that I did not use too much of any of the ingredients. There were multiple items that called for honey, but it seemed to me that there just wasn't enough in the pantry. So I had to sit down and do some math (not my strong suit) to determine how much total I needed and what I needed to use that evening. However I figured it, things just kept coming up short. We had enough to do the things we needed to do for the evening, but that would put us in not so good shape for the morning. I talked the Breakfast Cook out of some of his honey and that made me feel better. The next morning I was still under the mistaken hopefulness that Aoghann was going to be able to make it, but alas it was not to be. I had a good chat with him on the phone and he blessed the jettisoning of the subtleties. He also told me that he had arranged for a grill miester (for a grilled chicken dish) which was a relief to me. Shortly thereafter I had a lovely lady approach me looking for Aoghann. I informed her that he was unable to be there and she said that she was send with a message from the aforementioned grill miester who was ill at home and unable to make it. So she was his replacement. I welcomed her to the kitchen and said it was the feast of the replacements. The primary difference between the rest of the day and my normal feast modus opperandi was that I really had no grasp on the dishes and what needed to be done to accomplish them. Usually I have the entire day mapped out in my head, with each step of each dish second nature to me. With this feast, when someone would approach me to either volunteer or ask for an additional task I had to beg their patience and consult many, many papers. I had to figure out what needed to be done next before I could tell them what to do. But everyone had patience with me and I did my best to be cheerful and upbeat. I believe that one of the most important elements that makes for a good feast kitchen is laughter. Because if you are not having fun, then you are just chopping 40 lbs of onions - and no-one likes that. Another challenge was having no idea what the desired outcome of each dish was. Assistants would do some steps and then ask me to taste something, or look at something to see if it was the right consistency - and I would say "I have no idea if it is right, but it is good. And that is good enough for me." At one point I had a good gentle that I knew was experienced and a novice walk in at the same time. There were 4 dressings/sauces that needed to be prepared so I handed all 4 to her with a helper and said make these. A couple of these sauces required honey and I knew that we were low on honey so I told her which ones to substitute sugar water for honey in. I had already made the same substitutions for portions of the honey in other dishes, to make it stretch. She came back to me to say that she could not find the Apple Cider vinegar (which 3 of the 4 recipes required). I had logged the vinegar in the evening before, and it was there at 4:15 am when I left the kitchen so I told here where it was on the shelf. No dice. We looked and looked and there was no Apple Cider Vinegar to be found anywhere. And it was one of those really big containers (larger than a gallon of milk jug) of AC Vinegar. So we ended up sending someone to the store for the Vinegar, because it was something I just could not fake. By this point it was getting to the time to fire up the grill, and I sat down with my grill girl. Aoghann had the chicken scheduled to be cooked and then held in the oven for an extended period. I had been having some difficulties with the ovens, one of them refused to go below 400 degrees and the other would not go below 450. Because of this I had been cooking the pork in large pans tightly covered with foil in the convection oven. I would have preferred to turn the blower off on the convection oven, but it would not hold temperature without the blower. The grill was large enough to cook all of the chicken at the same time, so I pushed the chicken back to 4:30 (with feast being at 6:00). I believe that Aoghann had gotten a good deal on chicken seeing that he had bought a great deal more than he really needed. Considering that we had 90 people signed up for feast, and enough chicken for well over 150 I decided to cook only a portion of the chicken and prep the rest to be sent home and frozen for future use. At 4:15 the grill was fired up and the chicken to be cooked was put on at 4:30. About 10 minutes later I was called out to the grill. When they had closed the grill all of the paint and rust from the inside top of the grill had decided to delaminate and fall upon the chicken. There was a charcoal grill on site, and we had charcoal, but I did not think we could get coals going in time to get it done. The chicken was to be grilled and basted with a sweet marinade. The pork had already completed cooking and was resting inside a cooler (which is another story entirely) so I had the pans that the pork had cooked in cleaned well and pulled out the chicken that had been put away. We had enough chicken to cook a ton more, but it would have been packed into the pans and taken forever to cook. So, I put just enough chicken to serve the tables into the pans and divided the marinade between the three. Covered tightly in the foil they went into the convection oven with the timer set for an hour. All of the dishes were finishing up nicely, so now came the time to evaluate the available feast serving dishes and decide how to serve things. I was working with a first time Hall Steward (who I had been speaking with off and on throughout the day regarding recruitment of servers) so she had no vision of how she wanted things to go. We had agreed on the set up of the hall earlier and with a feast count knew that we would have 14 tables of 6 plus high table. I went through the menu and determined what foods would be served on/in what plate/bowl and where there would be tight turn arounds on certain plates that would need to be reused. We worked on setting up a drink station and a serving station. By this point the help in the kitchen was thinning out and I had everyone who was not working on last minute dishes cleaning and removing extraneous prep items. Because of the size of this kitchen I like to have as many of the counters cleaned off as possible for plating. The service of the feast went fine and a wonderful clean-up crew came in to finish out the night. There was a moment of panic and then laughter when it was discovered that the good gentle who had trailed the grill to the event had snuck in during the feast and quietly trailed away the grill, FULL OF RAW CHICKEN. But he was called on his cell phone an appraised of the situation. Luckily he found it amusing also. I learned a great deal from this adventure. One dish that really surprised me was the salmon cakes. Everyone loved them and I would have never thought that canned salmon would go over so well. Almost every course had a different style of cold salad in it, and that was greatly appreciated by the diners. It had been a warm day, and much of the other food was very heavy. I received many comments that it made people able to eat more. That when they felt way to full they could take a moment and eat something refreshing and then be ready for more. This was particularly true of the apple salad. The boar stew was universally applauded and again, not something I would have thought to serve. I am going to have to get Aoghann's source for this. And the barley and radish pilaf really surprised me in both how good it tasted and how well it was received. During the feast preparation there were several items that I will not do without again. Bryn Madoc has managed to acquire a commercial grade Robo Coupe, with all of the attachments. It did something I have up until now been unable to accomplish - attract some die-hard fighters into the kitchen. A big, shiny, highly destructive machine is apparently irresistible. Another gadget that I will be acquiring is the automatic potato peeler that the Breakfast Cook brought. I have found it online: http://shop.store.yahoo.com/wonderfulbuysca/starrotpotpe.html and I covet it. We did both apples and pears on the thing and it made things fun for the peelers. It does leave odd ridges on the fruits, but I was actually complemented on the lovely decorative effect on the poached pears. Hah! A thing that I had brought with me and that was in constant use was my Wand Blender. We used it on the Custards and the Cheese Spread and I believe one other thing. I would highly recommend that everyone who has a kitchen kit make sure they include one of them. I am confident there is more I could discuss (like the fiasco around the pork and the cooler) but this has become very long. Having attained some distance from the event I can say that I had fun. It was not what I had planned on doing that weekend, but I believe I did the best I could and hopefully did the lovely feast that Lord Aoghann put all of his time and effort into justice. Will I seek out a repeat of the situation, Oh NO! But do I have a higher level of confidence in what I can achieve, well Yes. Glad Tidings, Serena da Riva Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 15:14:30 -0400 From: Barbara Benson Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Feast Challanges/Disaster for Stefan (really long) To: Cooks within the SCA >> There were multiple >> items that called for honey, but it seemed to me that there just >> wasn't enough in the pantry. > Johnnae> So what happened to the honey? Both that and the Apple Cider Vinegar remain a mystery. I think there might be someone out there with a large amount of purloined Sekanjabin - it is the only thing I can come up with that requires those two ingredients ;)! (skip the following if you hate math like I do) I believe that there is a possibility that not enough honey was purchased in the first place. A translation from oz to pounds to cups and tablespoons went all wonky at some point. According to the spread sheet he purchased 10 lbs of honey which converts to roughly 160 oz. When I converted the cups and tablespoons to oz and added them altogether I came up with a figure of needing around 103 Cups. I then looked at the numbers closer and decided that he did not actually need 4 cups of honey per batch of dressing for the apple salad and assumed that he meant Tablespoons which equals a quarter cup. This brought the total cups needed to about 47 cups.1 cup = 8 oz which multiplies out to 376 oz. And all of this I am really unsure about because the whole oz vs. fl oz thing confuses me. What it came down to is that I had two 5 lb containers of honey for the feast. I scavenged an additional 5 lb container plus a part of another 5 lb container and I still did not have enough honey to prepare the planned items. But we made it up with simple syrup and everything was fine. (end of math bit) Glad Tidings, Serena Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 15:44:51 -0400 From: "Lonnie D. Harvel" Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Feast Challanges/Disaster for Stefan (really long) To: Cooks within the SCA Johnna Holloway wrote: > So what happened to the honey? > Johnnae From all accounts, Serena did a magnificent job preparing the feast. As for the honey, it appears that there were two causes for the shortage. The first was my own error. My conversion from Tbs to lbs was not correct. Going from volume to weight can always be problematic, and I goofed it on the honey. To make matters worse, someone who was contributing a 5lb jug of honey forgot to bring it. If Serena had all three of the 5lb jugs, she would still have been short, but not as bad. Leaving it totally out of the carrots actually balanced the flavors in the course better anyway. The 4 cups of honey in the apple salad was supposed to be 1/4 cup. Totally, the feast should have had about 47 cups of honey. So, how many 5lb jugs should that have been? Aoghann Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 15:52:58 -0400 From: "Lonnie D. Harvel" Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Feast Challanges/Disaster for Stefan (really long) To: Cooks within the SCA I found a website that says the weight of 1 cup of honey is approximately 12 oz. If that is correct, than I would have needed 7 of the 5lb jugs instead of the 3+ Serena was able to come up with on site. Or... less than half of what she actually needed! Aoghann Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 21:37:41 -0400 From: "Lonnie D. Harvel" Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Feast Challanges/Disaster for Stefan (really long) To: Cooks within the SCA Sharon Gordon wrote: > 3) If Aoghann sees this, would you tell us about the longships? > They sound like a cool idea. OK, you asked... ;) On the Monday before the event, we discovered that some of our serving dishes were no longer with us. So, I began to try and figure out how I wanted to serve the courses. On Tuesday evening, after going to bed, I had a fun idea. There were four courses in the meal and decided to try for some humor. Danelaw is a Saxon vs. Vikings event. Here is how it would have gone if I had not tried to do free-weight lifting with giant bags of bread... There were no Royals at the event, so only a short Baronial court was held. The "main" item in the first course was the Boar Stew. It was to be introduced with "In compensation for a short court, we are serving stewed boors." The main item in the second course was the grilled (roasted) chicken. I was looking for a way to cover the plain plates that would most likely be used, so I came up with the idea of using the outer cabbage leaves (blanched) to cover the plates. The chicken would then be piled up in the middle. A tattered standard made from a bamboo skewer, cheescloth and food coloring would be inserted into the pile. It would be introduced as "Saxon Chickens heaped upon the green." The main item in the third course was the roasted pork. On Friday evening, we would have used the convection oven to make viking long ships. Toothpicks (covered with aluminum foil for baking) would be inserted in the sides to hold the "shields". The shields would be made from apple "rings" cut from apples that were not cored. The shield boss would be the ends of the radishes saved from the pilaf. If time permitted, a couple of talented Laurels had offered to paint the longships with food coloring. The pork would be cut into chunks and piled into the boats. The plates would be covered with kale (everybody probably wondered what the kale was for) and ships would be placed on top of that. Furled sails would be made from cheesecloth and bamboo skewers and laid across the pork. The course would be introduced as "A fleet of Viking Swine." The fourth course was just the pears in wine and the custard. It would have been introduced as "A gang of drunken pairs." As Serena said, the only information on the sheets was a time slot for making the long ships, the furled sails, and a recipe for the pastry dough that I got from this list. It was just a last minute idea that never made it out of my head. All of the components were not even on site, since I went down before finishing. The ships will definitely make it into another feast someday. Aoghann Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 17:50:16 -0400 From: Barbara Benson Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Boar Meat To: Cooks within the SCA > How did the boar meat work out? > Was it worth the price and bother? > I know that it was discussed here earlier. > > Johnnae It must have gotten lost in the huge missive, but the boar stew was a big hit. Upon reviewing the recipe, my plan was to put a couple of the fattier pieces of meat into the fry pans and render them to use the fat to saute the onions in. But the meat was really really lean. I did not get too much fat. Luckily the cast iron was well seasoned and it wasn't a big deal. Most people were unaware that it was boar (apparently cannot read) and I even got a couple of comments that they loved the beef stew. Go figure. The stew was prepared the night before and allowed to cook for about an hour while the custards were cooking. Then both giant pots went into the walk-in, tightly covered. About two hours before feast I pulled it back out and brought it back to a simmer. I had not put all of the spices that the recipe called for just in case something intensified too much (I am pretty sure he had just multiplied it, that is what I do - I just know that the numbers on the sheet are the maximum that I want to put in and I put in about half, taste and creep up on the full quantities). The taster that I had in charge of that said that the only thing it needed was salt and added it. Glad Tidings, Serena Edited by Mark S. Harris Danelaw-Feast-art 12 of 12