feasts-msg - 5/17/96
Ideas and comments for SCA feasts.
NOTE: See also the files: headcooks-msg, fst-disasters-msg, Fst-Menus-art,
feast-ideas-msg, feast-menus-msg, utensils-msg, p-menus-msg, p-cooks-msg.
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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
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Thank you,
Mark S. Harris AKA: Lord Stefan li Rous
mark.s.harris@motorola.com stefan@florilegium.org
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Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: greg@silver.lcs.mit.edu (Hossein Ali Qomi (mka Gregory F. Rose))
Subject: Re: Feast Format
Organization: The Rialto
Date: Tue, 6 Apr 1993 05:49:26 GMT
Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn. Dafydd ap Gwystl recently
posted an interesting article on feasting alternatives. He began by
citing a number of common problems with SCA feasts: not much variety,
food arrives too late, courses take too long, they destroy the evening,
etc. Most of these are, indeed, serious problems at lots of events.
But I do not think his proposal really solves them, and I see it as
raising more problems than it solves.
Dafydd's suggestion was essentially an all-day buffet, with dishes coming
out as ready, running until about two hours before feast time, then a one
course formal feast. Not all events should be alike, and I believe that
it follows from this that not all feasts should. There are probably event
structures that work very well with something like this. But in general,
I see it as causing more problems than it fixes.
First, what's good about the suggestion. In my opinion, two really big things:
-- People get fed before dinner time. This, I think, is really important,
and I am a strong proponent of having _something_ available to eat
before, say, 2PM, if it's only bread and fruit.
-- People get used to the idea that you don't have to eat everything that
is served. In _any_ meal of above a dozen dishes, whatever the format,
there's something mildly nuts about compulsively taking some of every-
thing.
But we can get these in other ways. The flip side I see is that there
are at least five real problems.
(1) In many typical cases, time during the day is scheduled -- frequently
with fighting going until about 2 hrs before the feast. Many tournament
formats do not leave the fighters with time to go browse. The result is
that you have just closed the fighters out of most of the dishes of the
feast. They pay as much as anyone else -- but only get to eat a small
proportion of what's put out. AND they're the ones most likely to hit
the feast hungrier than a ravening locust.
(2) It's hard enough to get people to announce what's in an organized,
simply presented course. I can't imagine that as food trickles out all
day, people are really going to know what's out there and when. Even I
am a little hesitant to eat medieval mystery food ("What is it?" "Some
kind of pasty." "I can see that; what's _in_ it?" "Food? How should
I know?"). In addition, it's really unlikely that people will know when
the hot things get out; more likely, most people will try everything
at room temperature. (Which raises interesting questions like, how do
you keep from feeding people salmonella with the chicken?) This sounds
like lots of happy hour buffets I've been to, where getting any of the
better dishes is a matter of luck crossed with black magic. As a cook,
I'd rather have more control over who has access to food, and the condition
they get it in.
(3) Dafydd suggests a larger audience for things like sotelties. If you
want everyone to see the sotelty, the obvious move is to take it all the way
around the (seated) hall. Putting it on a sideboard will only work if
it's inedible (otherwise, people see bits of what used to be a castle),
and there's a further problem if it's temperature-sensitive (has to be
eaten reasonably promptly, e.g. contains chicken, etc.). The set-it-out-
all-day approach works reasonably well for marzipan and for some sorts of
gingerbread (regardless of the feast format, actually, so long as people
don't dig in the moment it gets out!), but not for much else.
(4) Where do you put your feast gear? If the "first course" is not all
finger food, you need to eat it on, in, and with feast gear, which is
thereafter dirty. You probably don't want to try to repack it between then
and dinner. But ex hypothesi, the hall is not set up with tables to leave
it on. -- This kind of structural change has lots on consequences.
(5) Dafydd points out that SCA feasts are not much like medieval ones,
in that a medieval feasts often started at midday and went on into the
evening. That's true up to a point, i.e., one kind of medieval feast
did that. BUT -- that kind of feast was the most intensively served,
carefully seated, and thoroughly engaging kind. People sat; food was
brought to them, usually by pairs, and what they did during those hours
was eat, talk to the people on either side of them, and listen to and
watch entertainment.
I know of no less medieval presentation of food than a buffet without a
seating.
Picnics I can document. One and two course meals with relatively simple
service I can document. Buffets? With no arranged seating? If someone
else can document this to period, I'd be interested in the source.
Yes, serving is a problem. Labor at events often is. I am happier with
trying to convince members of local groups that they are the hosts at their
events, and that it is "spiff" to act like hosts, than in deciding not to
provide service.
*****
Many of the evils Dafydd points to have, it seems to me, three roots:
(a) modern tastes in conflict with medieval practice; (b) resource
limitations; and (c) poor scheduling. I think we should fix what's
broken, and accept the limits that are built-in.
Modern people do not want to spend the time at table that medievals did
when feasting. This, so far as I can tell, is an absolute, and it seems
to me madness to fight it. The very longest people want to stay at table
seems to be something between an hour and a half and two hours. Trying to
hold them longer -- often even that long -- is misguided.
The other side of the coin is that modern people _do_ prefer to sit down
to meals, with their friends. It is easiest to accomodate this in a
hall with general seating. (The buffet approach forces people to get
together and plan when they are going to eat, in a setting where knowing
what time it is -- "Oh, is it that late? Oops -- my lady/lord was
expecting me for lunch an hour and a half ago..." -- makes things harder,
not easier. It also doesn't reliably give them anywhere to sit.)
Modern people, especially U.S. types, frequently don't want to eat what
medievals ate. It isn't budget that keeps me from serving dishes based
on innards.... Now, Dafydd's plan lets cooks cover wider ground -- but
the cost is preparing two to three times as many dishes. In my experience,
time and preparation resources are a worse constraint than money. I
experiment with these things at home or in private gatherings. I respect
-- profoundly -- cooks who can experiment by making 25 to 30 dishes for a
feast instead of the 15 or so I normally make (excluding breads and spreads),
but I don't expect to see much of that. When I do, I expect to see most of
the dishes made before and carried in. Some dishes are better after a
few days -- but most are not. There's a real price to the all-cooked-ahead
feast.
Resource limitations, such as time and kitchen space as well as limited
budgets, are with us to stay. There are things you can do to stretch your
money. (Use wholesale services; special order; take advantage of quantity;
buy in bulk; etc.) The worst limitations, really, are those placed by the
kitchen (or absence of one), your group's ability to store ingredients and
finished dishes, and the amount of labor you can count on both beforehand
and on site. None of these change when you change the format. But some
formats take more than others -- and the proposed one, so far as I can tell,
increases rather than decreasing most of the requirements along these
dimensions.
The worst culprit with regard to the problems Dafydd cites, though, is poor
planning and scheduling. This has at least two parts. The first is the
scheduling _in the kitchen_ that results in courses being too far apart or
delayed waiting on individual dishes. There is no intrinsic reason why
there should be anything like the waits Dafydd described between courses
-- unless there are major equipement failures, which will be a problem no
matter what, or unless you have overplanned your kitchen. I generally
plan on no more than 20 min between courses, and don't have much trouble
making that schedule.
The other part is poor event scheduling. If you schedule dinner for 7, let
everything slide an hour and tell your kitchen to serve at 8, allow an hour
or so for eating, another half hour to clear the hall for dancing, and you're
going to need an hour's clean-up before you go -- and you have to be out at
10:30 -- well, no, you're not getting in any dancing, but that's not the
feast's fault. Dancing gets crowded out so often because it is generally
the last thing on the schedule before clean-up, because the time you have
to be out of the hall is relatively inflexible, and because we tend to let
_everything_ else slide: fighting, court, everything. Cutting into the feast
is not a good solution: people are going to want to eat too. If you schedule
twenty minutes for the feast, and let everything else slide by an hour and
a half -- you still aren't going to dance. The feast gets blamed, because
it is the thing just before the dancing. But it's rarely the culprit, and
monkeying with it doesn't deal with the problems.
Most events I have been to have been scheduled in ways that virtually
guaranteed that the evening's activities were toast. If you want to be
sure that everything happens, the simplest remedy is to set a schedule that
can be followed, and then follow it. If something runs an hour over
schedule, and you have all your time scheduled -- an hour's worth of
something else is not going to happen. Facing simple arithmetic of this
kind is going to be more helpful than any amount of format changing. (The
recent Atlantian coronation is a pretty good example of something that
was carefully scheduled to let a lot of complex and neat things happen,
and that ran pretty well to schedule. It can be done.)
I personally prefer a main meal at midday, for lots of reasons; but most
events built around fighting make that impossible because of the rest of
the schedule. Failing that, I think a simpler solution to the two problems
of hungry people and failed schedules is food available at midday -- but
not much, not fancy, and nothing that takes significant effort away from
making the primary meal -- and a well-planned feast of one to three courses
that takes no more than 45 min to and hour and a quarter, and that starts
and ends on time. By the day of the event, the nobility holding court
should know how many items of business they want to conduct, letting an
experienced herald give a pretty good estimate of how long it will take.
_Use_ that estimate in scheduling court. Move court earlier, not the feast
later, if there is a problem (bearing always in mind that a populace that is
ravenous is not paying attention anyhow). Or -- if you are stuck with a
scheduling problem, deal with it -- but recognize that the problem is
with scheduling.
Anyhow, my initial two cents' worth....
Cheers,
-- Angharad/Terry
From: kuijt@umiacs.umd.edu (David Kuijt)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Feast Format
Date: 7 Apr 93 19:18:08 GMT
Organization: UMIACS, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742
Greetings to the rialto from Dafydd ap Gwystl!
The wise, fair, and talented Lady Angharad responded to my earlier note:
>Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn. Dafydd ap Gwystl recently
>posted an interesting article on feasting alternatives. He began by
>citing a number of common problems with SCA feasts: not much variety,
>food arrives too late, courses take too long, they destroy the evening,
>etc. Most of these are, indeed, serious problems at lots of events.
[...]
>Dafydd's suggestion was essentially an all-day buffet, with dishes coming
>out as ready, running until about two hours before feast time, then a one
>course formal feast. Not all events should be alike, and I believe that
>it follows from this that not all feasts should. There are probably event
>structures that work very well with something like this. But in general,
>I see it as causing more problems than it fixes.
Before I get into responding to the note in general, let me say that you
have exposed a hidden assumption in my mind when I was writing the original
note. I was thinking about events without major fighting during the day.
As it happens, this sort of event is fairly rare, and this rarity happens
to make my suggestion for a different feast format significantly less
useful. Oh, well.
Angharad points out five problems with my format: (summarized for brevity)
(1) Fighting (or other activities) during the day. Fighters don't get
to see the food, or eat it.
Point well taken. Now that it is pointed out to me, I agree
completely--at any event where significant fighting or other
out-of-hall activities occur, my suggestion wouldn't work.
(I must confess, when Elizabeth and I were talking about it,
we were discussing feast format and court format at our
coronation, if we were to win a crown tournament sometime
soon. Planning a coronation before winning a crown tourney
is pretty tacky, I know--we weren't planning, it was a
theoretical conversation.)
(2) Presentation problems. "What is that?"
I had visualized the server who is responsible for serving
forth and maintaining the table as also filling the role of
describing the food and knowing what's in it.
(2.5) Temperature and timing.
Warming plates? This isn't an ideal solution, I know.
It isn't necessary to map the normal feast menu to the
first course of this format, though. Having a lot of
pies and room temperature food (pickled beef!!) would
fit my image of the first course. Anything that has
a fast spoil-time wouldn't be appropriate for the afternoon
course.
(4) Feast Gear.
Yeah, this is a problem. Cleaning it between courses is
going to be a problem, leaving it out won't always work,
and if the afternoon course is nothing but fingerfood then
we aren't talking about a two-course feast, we are talking
about snacks and a meal. (Which is also fine, but not my
original suggestion). I haven't got any good answers for
this one (yet?)
(5) Buffets without seating ain't any more medieval than the SCA
feast.
Oh, well. I didn't know.
Moving away from my particular suggestion, and into the problems that
motivated it, Angharad says:
>Many of the evils Dafydd points to have, it seems to me, three roots:
>(a) modern tastes in conflict with medieval practice; (b) resource
>limitations; and (c) poor scheduling.
>Modern people do not want to spend the time at table that medievals did
>when feasting. This, so far as I can tell, is an absolute, and it seems
>to me madness to fight it. The very longest people want to stay at table
>seems to be something between an hour and a half and two hours.
>Modern people, especially U.S. types, frequently don't want to eat what
>medievals ate. It isn't budget that keeps me from serving dishes based
>on innards.... Now, Dafydd's plan lets cooks cover wider ground -- but
>the cost is preparing two to three times as many dishes. In my experience,
>time and preparation resources are a worse constraint than money. I
>experiment with these things at home or in private gatherings. [....]
Part of my motivation for the original suggestion was that I wanted to
be able to experience some of the medieval foods that modern U.S. types
don't generally eat. And I wanted to do it at an event. In my opinion
most SCA research that is not shared is sterile. And the best place to
share it is at events. I am not talking about forcing a cook to produce
delicacies; I was merely saying that this format would allow a cook to
experiment, and would allow people at the event to participate and taste
of the experiment. I wanna taste wierd food, even if I don't like it.
And if I do, so much the better. Eating, or at least tasting, medieval
food is part of creating a medieval environment.
You are right, it would be more work for the cook. But if I was the
cook, I would want to make wierd dishes once in a while, even if it
meant a little more work. (OK, maybe I'm odd.) Surely it is only in
the more medieval experiments that we gain some real insight into the
period. I could eat roast beef and mustard all day--I like it--but
it is when trying things that I haven't tried before that I expand my
view of what it was like, back then. And that's one of the reasons
I play the game.
>Resource limitations, such as time and kitchen space as well as limited
>budgets, are with us to stay.
[ many good suggestions deleted for space ]
>... The worst limitations, really, are those placed by the
>kitchen (or absence of one), your group's ability to store ingredients and
>finished dishes, and the amount of labor you can count on both beforehand
>and on site. None of these change when you change the format. But some
>formats take more than others -- and the proposed one, so far as I can tell,
>increases rather than decreasing most of the requirements along these
>dimensions.
Increases the requirements? Maybe, but I'm not convinced. It seems to
me that having one spread-out course from noon to afternoon, then one
big course in the early evening, wouldn't be any worse (and might be
easier, in some kitchens) than having three courses 30-90 minutes apart
starting in the evening. I don't see how it would be more work...
(Or are you comparing my suggestion to a single-course dinner in the
evening? I agree that that would be simpler, but the comparison I
meant to strike was to the standard 3-course SCA feast)
Of course, you are an experienced cook, and my experience is limited
to scullery help. My not seeing it doesn't make it not so.
>The worst culprit with regard to the problems Dafydd cites, though, is poor
>planning and scheduling. [kitchen scheduling and event scheduling]
I agree wholeheartedly.
>.... The feast gets blamed, because
>it is the thing just before the dancing. But it's rarely the culprit, and
>monkeying with it doesn't deal with the problems.
I agree that many times the feast gets blamed for squishing the dancing
when it isn't really the feast's (or the cook's) fault.
Your example (deleted for space) was a single-course evening feast.
In my post I was sort of addressing two issues: having a single-course
evening feast (as compared to a 3-course one), and having a buffet
during the day. A point I would like to emphasize (and with which I
feel you would agree) is that the 3-course feast is more subject to
kitchen scheduling error, and (being longer) is much more prone to
catastrophic domino event scheduling errors than a single-course feast.
[reasonable event scheduling suggestions deleted for space]
>...(The
>recent Atlantian coronation is a pretty good example of something that
>was carefully scheduled to let a lot of complex and neat things happen,
>and that ran pretty well to schedule. It can be done.)
Actually, as we both know, numerous things ran late, but they were
mostly indetectable to the casual participant. And the feast was on
schedule (and very tasty, too!). I think that parallelism was the
main reason no domino effect occurred--many things were going on at
once, but they were (as much as possible) not tied together sequentially
(i.e. Do A, then Do B). This meant that we had much more leeway for
fixing scheduling problems on the fly.
>I personally prefer a main meal at midday, for lots of reasons; but most
>events built around fighting make that impossible because of the rest of
>the schedule. Failing that, I think a simpler solution to the two problems
>of hungry people and failed schedules is food available at midday -- but
>not much, not fancy, and nothing that takes significant effort away from
>making the primary meal -- and a well-planned feast of one to three courses
>that takes no more than 45 min to and hour and a quarter, and that starts
>and ends on time.
This would be fine with me, too. But I've almost never seen it. I don't
remember if the Coronation feast fits within the 75 minute profile--it
was out quickly, anyway, so it must have been close--but I can count on
a single hand the number of feasts that I've had (in the last 5 years)
that took 45-75 minutes. That's one of the reasons why I think the 3-course
feast should be abandoned, or only trotted out on special occasions,
rather than being the SCA standby.
>By the day of the event, the nobility holding court
>should know how many items of business they want to conduct, letting an
>experienced herald give a pretty good estimate of how long it will take.
Ha. I think a fast feast is an elusive goal; having nobility that can
estimate court time well and stick to a schedule may be rarer still.
The skills involved are pretty rare, or at least rarely used. I've seen
it done, but not often. I'm not sure, but I think I've seen many more
bad courts in events than I've seen bad feasts. (Maybe cooks are
better at their trade than Kings are at theirs, eh?)
In summary, I accept your reasons 2.5, 4, and 5, as potent. Perhaps
I should scale back my idea--have a noon meal rather than a long
buffet. This would answer all your problems with my original suggestion
(the feast gear might still be a little awkward). It also takes
away one of the advantages of the original suggestion, though--the
"wierd/unique dish in small quantities" one. And that was one of
the reasons I liked the original idea so much. Shucks. Do you have
any ideas for modifications? Does anyone else have any ideas?
Dafydd ap Gwystl David Kuijt
Barony of Storvik kuijt@umiacs.umd.edu
Kingdom of Atlantia (MD,DC,VA,NC,SC)
From: corun@access.digex.com (Corun MacAnndra)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Feast Format
Date: 7 Apr 1993 15:59:05 -0400
Organization: Express Access Online Communications, Greenbelt, MD USA
Greetings to All on the Rialto.
Dafydd and Angharad have been talking about feast formats and so on, and
it's gotten me to thinking (I know, a dangerous thing indeed).
Recently we had some discussion on plays, and events that centered around
just a play rather than a play during a wider venue event. Well, why not
do the same thing with a feast? Have an event that is purely based on the
culinary side of the Middle Ages. You could schedule some minor entertainments
like jugglers or even a very short play or comedia, but you would exclude
those things which tend to make up the bulk of an event (ie. fighting,
someone's coronation, etc.) About a year or so ago, Canton Wrattingham put
on an Oriental Feast. We had some light entertainments like a Falling
Waters poetry competition, Tai Chi demonstrations, Chinese Tea Ceremony
demonstrations, etc. to fill in the dead space between courses. The foods
served ranged from Korean to Japanese, Chinese, and some Pacific Rim island
foods. We're going to do this feast again, but center more on Mongolian and
Chinese, with entertainments ranging around those cultures (Dafydd, get
your horse out again for the Mongolian version of the Palio). The first
feast was a great success.
I like to cook, and I must say I'm rather fond of my own work (hey, it's
a dirty job, and I get to do it), and trying new foods is always fun.
Dafydd, since we both live in Storvik, get ahold of me and let's discuss
the possibilities of this as a future event here. If we pull it off, we
can bring a full report to the Rialto of our success. It's a great opportunity
for research, and you might even get to try Lamprey Pie.
In service,
Corun
--
===========================================================================
Corun MacAnndra | Yes, we have no bananas.
Dark Horde by birth | No bananas in Scranton, P A
Moritu by choice | H. Chapin
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: tbarnes@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (thomas wrentmore barnes)
Subject: Re: Feast format
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Wed, 7 Apr 1993 23:38:14 GMT
To add to this discussion. I see some problems with some of Daffydd's
suggestions.
1) The reason why SCA meats tend to be beef and chicken is because they
are available and people eat them. Chicken runs at $ .39 to 1.29/lb. at
the grocery store and people eat it. Fish runs at $5.00 U.S. per pound and
barely gets eaten. If I want to have people enjoy my feast I serve
chicken. No contest. Ditto for beef. Specialty meats such as duck, game
hen and venison are hard to find and expensive. Specialty fish such as
lamphrey and eels are impossible to get in most of the U.S. outside of
major metro areas. Since meat is the most expensive item per portion in
any feast and SCA folk don't think that a feast is a feast unless they
get at least 1/2 lb. of various meats, I have to serve cheap meats
unless I want to charge $15-20 per seat at a feast. People won't pay
much more than $10-12 for a feast at most events unless, the feast has
been billed as being huge, fancy, and prepared by the best known of
cooks and is at an important event, such as a coronation or crown
tourney. So once again I have to serve cheap meats.
2) SCA feasts tend to run late due to bad timing and limited manpower.
Any geek can cook, it takes a good cook to cook in large quantities and
get it out on a tight schedule.
The first failing of SCA feasts is that the head cook lets the
fighters/merchants/whatever have the hall too long. I make it a rule
that everybody has to be out of the hall at least 45 minutes before the
feast starts, even if I have to throw in tear gas grenades to get them
to leave. This allows my set up crew to set up the hall and allows my
servers to set up a first remove.
Then stuff comes out at 15-20 minute intervals, even if I have
to juggle courses around to do it or some dish gets delayed.
This schedule is very strict. I've seen feasts delayed because
of B.S. with high table (not neccessarily royalty!) when some peer-mad
head server lets a peice of schtick go on too long. So, quite frankly, I
don't give a damn if the king gets served first. The stuff has to go out
on time so it does.
Bad timing is the most common and most leathal flaw in SCA
feasts. It can only be prevented by carefully choosing recipies that
aren't tricky, preparing at least some of each course in advance and
carefully calculating the amount of food that can be cooked in a given
container in a given time. Novice cooks don't realize the sheer scale
involved in industrial cooking, and so, for example, forget that 30 gal.
of water takes several hours to boil!
Somebody more experienced than I should write a TI article on
the subject.
As an aside. I was at a feast last weekend where they disguised
poor timing beautifully! They put paper banquet roll on the tables and
gave each table a cup full of crayons. People were so busy doodling that
they didn't notice that the feast was running late! Very clever!
3) Buffets - They suck. I never eat and will never prepare a buffet
style feast. The amount of food wasted because it gets cold or old vs.
the amount of food eaten is huge and greatly increases the cost per
portion. Furthermore, even with warming trays (if you have them) the
food gets overcooked and nasty.
The people who get to the buffet first also inevitably take too
much food, leaving the people at the end of the line with nothing but
crumbs and meat juice. You need to have servers manning the buffet to
control portions so there is no savings in manpower and the cook has
even less control over the presentation and health of his food than with
a sit-down feast. Finally, with a buffet, all the food has to be sent
out at once, rather than over several hours. This overtaxes the usual
church or campground kitchen.
There is nothing so uneconomical, unmedieval and inelegant as a
buffet-style feast. They should be banned from SCA events, except for
pitch-in dinners and simple dessert revel tables of goodies.
4) Medieval recipies - most people want a feast that "seems medieval"
rather than a truly medieval feast. This means lots of meat and possibly
a few weird recipies, but with ingredients that a modern person might
eat. This means that something like beef in egredouce is O.K. because
people understand beef in a sour sauce. But even then some people won't
eat it because they don't like the flavor. Something REALLY outre' like
Whole Pike in Galentine is essentially wasted food and effort. (Do not
laugh. This was served at a MK Coronation some years ago. Beautiful fish
with heads, skin, tail and fins on silver trays with bright red sauce
poured over them, served cold. Some people blanched because the fish
hadn't come out of a Mrs. Paul's package and was identifiable as a real
creature, others blanched because it was cold, yet others because it
was pike, others because of the weird blood-like sauce. Probably 50 lbs.
of good fish was thrown away, untouched.)
Furthermore, many foods are not USDA approved and can't be sold.
Some animals are only available as pets. (Go ahead, serve dormice at a
feast and see what happens. It's period, Apicius has a recipie for them.
But you'll never get anybody to kill, skin and butcher something that
looks for all the world like a chinchilla and people won't eat them once
they find out what they're eating.) Some period recipies are unhygenic
(I strongly suspect that the recipie for peacock with the skin on forces
you to put the raw peacock skin back onto the cooked bird. I'd never
allow this in my kitchen. Neither would the health department. But they
did it in period. Germ theory isn't period.)
So...we have to adapt medieval recipies to modern foods. I have
seen a redacted recipie where the original has a whole paragraph of
types of fowl that can be used. The modern redaction says simply "take
chicken".
So, what's my beef. I dunno. I guess that I think that Daffydd
is a bit naive about the subject. SCA feasts CAN'T be like medieval
feasts because medieval feasts had better sites, more manpower and a
bigger budget than SCA feasts. Sometimes our better technology can't
cover the fact that we're trying to emulate the lives of the medieval
jet set with middle class/student budgets.
Lothar \|/
0
Daffydd and Angahard (sp?) have made very
From: akatlas@athena.mit.edu (Alia Atlas)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Feast Format
Date: 8 Apr 1993 00:03:30 GMT
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Well, many of the things I would have said about the buffet idea and the problem
with delays during feasts have been said. I just want to agree again that cold
food, and long delays between courses are the fault of inadequate or poor
planning on the part of the Head Cook.
Here in Carolingia, our feasts are rarely three courses long, are almost always
on time, and seldom have problems with temperature. About a year ago, an event
was done where food was presented continously throughout the day. It was called
Id Al Fit'r and was set in Islamic Spain, I think twelth century, at the end of
a traditional monthlong daylight fast. It was a great deal more work than the
average feast, in part because of the ambitious dishes made, but also because of
the continous nature. Cooking a buffet and then a meal would have been even
more
involved. Think of the amount of washing, the problems with stove-space, or
oven! And, of course, the amount of additional labor needed.
As to serving something at midday, many events here have a cold lunch, made of
bread, cheese, some sort of meat and some fruit. It's simple and easy, and
rarely requires feastgear. When this is not the case, most people bring their
own lunch, which can range from being equally simple to being a chance to
demonstrate one's skills with elegance.
Since the case is that better planning, on part of Head Cook and attendees,
would solve the problems of cold, delayed feasts served to ravenous people, I
don't see the need for your suggestion. (I may be spoiled from living in
Carolingia, I grant.) One other thing that helps is holding Court after dinner.
It prevents the feast from being delayed by Court, and people are willing to sit
for longer after eating. I'd say that a good length for a feast is between 60
and 90 minutes, depending. Of course, this is all my opinion.
>In summary, I accept your reasons 2.5, 4, and 5, as potent. Perhaps
>I should scale back my idea--have a noon meal rather than a long
>buffet. This would answer all your problems with my original suggestion
>(the feast gear might still be a little awkward). It also takes
>away one of the advantages of the original suggestion, though--the
>"wierd/unique dish in small quantities" one. And that was one of
>the reasons I liked the original idea so much. Shucks. Do you have
>any ideas for modifications? Does anyone else have any ideas?
A couple ideas for unique dishes. First and simplest, make a small quantity of
strange foods, and put them on a table for the interested to help themselves.
You can, of course, make it better known/encouraged by presenting it to high
table.
Also, you could do a mixture of two dishes that are similiar, but one of which
has the strange food. For instance, in Daz buch von guter spise, there are two
recipes for "A Clever Food". The first has brains, in addition to apples, eggs
and such; the second omits the brains, but is made to imitate the first. Again,
there is a dish made of batter-covered dried fruits (such as dates, raisins,
etc)
put on a string and cooked. They are supposed to resemble intestines. And so
on. And there are always tarts of, for instance, pike innards. You don't want
to serve a large quantity of any of the stranger things to a table, but smaller
amounts could work. Perhaps, you color the dish with the odd ingrediant
differently. Or put a slice of a strange tart into a more ordinary one. This
gives the option to people who wish to taste more interesting foods, without
wasting so much. Make a subteltie from some strange food. (Some days I think
that the idea of coloring three eels blue and forming them into a pal wavy is,
well, tempting.)
Just some suggestions.
Caterina Sichling von Nuremberg
akatlas@athena.mit.edu
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: tbarnes@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (thomas wrentmore barnes)
Subject: Re: Feast format
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1993 00:20:56 GMT
Another, more constructive, post from Lothar.
I have noticed that many SCA feasts are mediocre due to bad timing.
Food is overcooked, or undercooked, or there are interminable waits
between courses. In fact, I would say that most SCA feasts suffer to
some degree from this problem.
Here are my suggestions.
1) Look at your kitchen before you plan your menu. Figure the number of
burners/ovens/refrigerator space you will need for each pot/tray/dish.
2) Plan your menu based on your resources. Make food that is cheap to
buy, easy to cook and serve and will please your customers.
This means that weird and hard to prepare dishes are right out
and expensive dishes can only be served in small quantities.
Take the number of ounces of food that you plan to serve and
multiply it by the number of people you plan to serve. Most people are
satisfied by about a pound (cooked wieght) of food and consider 2 lbs.
to be more than enough. (Therefore, you should serve 1 1/4 to 1 3/4
lbs.) This is an accurate enough measurement since the number of heavy
eaters offsets the number of picky or light eaters.
Then, figure out how much pot/oven rack area you need to prepare
each dish and figure out how long it takes to prepare it.
3) Prepare as much food as you can in advance of the feast, if it will
hold until the feast. If you can make bread and freeze it, or you can
make a dessert that will hold several days before the feast, do so. You
want to prepare as little as possible on the day and you want to prepare
as little as possible while the feast is being prepared.
Furthermore, having several things that will hold well (like
meat pies and quiches) that can be quickly rewarmed will allow you to
optimize your oven space, which is usually at a premium in most
kitchens. Buy things that need a lot of refrigerator space at the last
minute (on a "just in time" basis) or hold them on ice to preserve your
refrigerator space.
Prepare and hold as many ingredients as you can the night before
the feast.
4) Give yourself sufficient money so that you can handle any crisis on
the day. You should be able to replace or change one dish on the menu
with a substitute if neccessary.
5) Drinks - SCA feasts tend to have really crummy beverages and they
don't hold well because they require a lot of storage space. Make them
up in advance if you can and then store them as best you can (outdoors
for winter events is good). Drinks take a lot of time to warm up or cool
down in mass quantities. Give a 20 gal. container of liquid at least 12
hours to cool and 1 hour to come to a boil on a stove burner.
Iced tea (made with real tea, not instant), sekanjabin, and
lemonade are moderately cheap and easy to make. It might be possible to
make other fruit drinks.
At a summer or hot event expect people to drink approximately 1
quart to 1/2 gallon of liquid. At winter or cool events expect people to
drink approximately 1 qt. of liquid.
6) Lunch - sometimes, if you have a large pot of stock left over from
preparing meat from a recipie you can afford to serve people a "free
lunch". Generally this consists of several pounds of $ .39 chicken leg
quarters in a 20 gal. stockpot with several packages of egg noodles and
a large bag of carrots. Total cost is about $5.00.
This only makes sense if you have the stock and manpower on hand
to do this and you aren't busy with other recipies.
7) Spices - are weird in large portion cooking. They don't always mix
well and the recipie that test-kitchened well as a 2-10 portion item
might taste weird as a 100 portion item. Correct spicing is largely a
matter of trial and error. You have to taste your ingredients as you go
along to get the spicing right.
8) Cooking - most food is mostly water so you're dealing with basic
thermodynamics when you cook large portions. Large pots of water heat
slowly and cool slowly. Large portions of food that begin to overcook
will keep overcooking due to their internal heat.
The moral? Allow a lot of time to allow things to heat and cool
down and make sure that cooking techniques that work on a small scale
(where a lot of energy can be applied to a system quickly) work on a
large scale (where the same energy can't be applied as quickly since
the system is larger). Things like rice and noodles have to be cooked in
an entirely different way when you're cooking dozens of portions.
Veggies have to be slightly undercooked, to avoid overcooking
due to their cumulative internal heat in large portions.
9) TIMING IS EVERYTHING - Make sure that your feast starts on time even
if you have to firebomb the tournament or the court to get it to start
on time. Have at least 1/3 of each course ready to go with minimal
hassle (this can mean cold dishes or rewarmed dishes).
Hot dishes should be designed so that they require very little
attention from one person and very little preperation before they can be
served. Large feasts are NOT the place to serve time sensitive, hard to
make dishes such as home-made candies, merangues or souffles unless you
happen to have hundreds of courdon bleu chefs on your staff.
Each course should be designed so that elements of one course
can be swapped out in exchange for elements of another course in case
some dish is running late.
Feast hall presentations and schtick should never be allowed to
interfere with the service of the feast. People are paying for the food,
not the entertainment and most servers can do their jobs without
disrupting the entertainment.
It is critical that you get most of your food out within 1/2 an
hour. Most people get "full" about 20 minutes after they have eaten. YOu
should have 1 course on the table when people enter the hall, one course
on the table 5-10 minutes after people enter the hall and one course
every 15-20 minutes thereafter until you are done.
Even if you can't get everything out. It is critical that you
get SOMETHING out, otherwise people will eat the paint off the walls, or
will give up and go to McBurgerdeath.
10) Clean-up - have mop, broom and bucket handy for disasters. Give
everyone a trashbag for their dirty dishes at the end of the feast so
that they won't wash their dishes in the bathroom and clog the pipes.
Have your servers come by at the end of each remove with an "alms bowl"
(or tray) so people can get rid of their bones/orange peels and clear
their plate for the next remove.
Lothar \|/
0
P.S. would anyone else in the Knowne World like to see a rating system
or qualification system for cooks so you know what you're likely to get
when you go to a feast? As it is, the name recognition system doesn't
work and people are reluctant to go to feasts for fear of paying lots of
money for bad food.
From: WALTER@tandem.PHysics.upenn.EDU
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: feast format
Date: 8 Apr 1993 14:51:55 -0400
Organization: The Internet
God give you good day, gentles:
Davydd has asked for more suggestions about how to accommodate
more diverse dishes at a feast. I make bold to suggest something that
was tried (with reasonable success) in the East's Barony of Bhakail
many years ago. Instead of trying to force "interesting"dishes on
the masses at a Coronation or other kingdom event, we had a
"Dine-At-Your-Own-Risk-Feast". In other words, a whole event geared
towards experimentation with non-standard feast dishes. An event
for foodies. If I remember correctly, there were seeral cooks,
each responsible for a few dishes which were of particular interest
to them (the fact that we had a lot of acventurous cooks in the barony
at the time helped). The size of the event was limited, and the price
was a bit higher than usual in order to accomodate the use of rare and
unusual ingredients. There may also have been some food-related
activies (classes and such) during the day, although my memory fails
me on many of the specifics. It was a qualified success -- not everything
turned out spectacularly, of course -- and was held twice. Unfortunately
the lady who was the motivating force behind it (Lys d'Arras) left the
SCA shortly thereafter.
I have also seen room for similar experimentation at "themed"
events -- a Lenten feast, an Elizabethan feast, etc. Most of these
events seem to be attened by people more willing to try unusual
dishes. (Whoops, that word was "attended".) Personally I feel that
there is no point in cooking these things for people who will not
appreciate them, and so such dishes work best at theme-specific events
where people are more likely to be interested and open-minded. Maybe
this is a narrow view of the average event-goer, but there it is. So
much else happens at large kingdom events that the food cannot really
be the star in any case, and to put time and effort into, say, an eel
pie only to have 80% of the attendees say "Eels! Yuck!" is really a
shame.
If you have any interest in the Dine-At-Your-Own-Risk idea, let
me know and I will try to dig up the names of those who might remember
more than I. Hope this was helpful (and not too crabby).
Sincerely,
Karen Walter/Richenda Cameron
Shire of Hartshorn-dale, East
walter@tandem.physics.upenn.edu
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: tbarnes@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (thomas wrentmore barnes)
Subject: how to have a (deliberately) small event
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1993 01:26:10 GMT
Recently, the powers that be in the Middle Kingdom let it be known that
they'd like to see more small events.
My shire has discovered a site that would be perfect for about
150 people and we were discussing ways to have an event that wouldn't be
swamped with people.
Here are some of the ideas we came up with:
1) Don't hold a tourney.
Advantages: No worry about the tourney running over and
interfering with feast. The main hall is available for dancing through
the day, even if the weather isn't nice. Limited chance that Royalty
(with associated attendance surge and court) will show.
Disadvantages: Pisses off the fighters, who tend to control the
use of the family car, meaning that A&S types won't be able to attend
even if they want to. Local politics requires that fighters be included.
Nearest local groups have strong fighter contingents that have
traditionally provided most of our attendance.
2) Limit the size of the feast. This gives people a sense of how many
people the organizers of the event expect.
Advantages: Puts an informal cap on attendance.
Disadvantages: Forces a lot of people to forage at a limited
selection of mundane resturaunts off-site. Pisses people off. Low
expected attendance means high site fees.
3) Cap attendance by making site fee and feast a package deal and
requiring reservations.
Advantages: Allows the cooks to do an "all day" feast or
continuous drinks and buffet table, since everyone is paying for the
food. Puts an informal cap on attendance.
Disadvantages: Forces us to turn away people who show up on the
day. Combined site and feast fee might cause some people to buck at the
high price. Would discourage people with special dietary needs (Kosher,
vegan, food allergies) who don't want to eat the feast.
4) Having a narrow focus event - like dancing, music, archery or
textiles. Or, we could do a narrow time period event with the emphasis
on authenticity.
Advantages: Self-limiting attendance. Those who aren't
interested won't show.
Disadvantages: We might choose too narrow a focus (7th century
Bulgaria anyone?) and lose our shirts.
What strategies have other groups used to encourage small
events, without driving everybody away?
What do you think would be good topics for narrow focus events?
How well does requiring reservations for admission to the site
work?
Lothar \|/
0
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: tbarnes@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (thomas wrentmore barnes)
Subject: Re: Feast Format
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1993 22:06:19 GMT
RE: Bertram's question. A contemporary chronicler derided Richard II (?)
of Englands feasts for serving rotted meat generally being of bad
quality. I'll go run down the exact reference if you really want it.
There are also multiple ordinances against sellers of meatpies
prohibiting them from buying left-over or waste meat from the houses of
the rich. The meat was pretty horrible by the time it got cooked into
meat pies.
Lothar \|/
0
From: NIELSEN@falcon.mayo.EDU
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Day-long feasts, pineapples
Date: 8 Apr 1993 19:22:49 -0400
Organization: The Internet
Greetings unto the Rialto from Lady Therica!
Speaking of feasts as we are, our Shire had a day-long one about 6 months
ago. Two cooks, one from Calontir and one from the Midrealm, challenged each
other on who was the better cook, thus producing the event 'Cook's Challenge'.
The first was done in Calontir, the second done in our Shire of Silfren Mere.
Basically the premise was: serve six courses over the space of a day, starting
at around noon and going until 8 or so. We invited a number of cooks who then
formed 6 teams and produced the courses. It was interesting...
Some advantages:
1) You never got 'stuffed' because you didn't have a lot to eat all
at once.
2) Since there were teams of cooks, not all the cooking was done by
a small (and weary!) minority.
3) Some very good dishes were served (yum!) and the feast was anything
but boring.
Some disadvantages:
1) You never got 'stuffed' because some of the cooks misjudged on the
food and those of us at the end of the line (we served buffet-style)
got little or none (and some people LIKE the 'stuffed' feeling you
get from feasts!).
2) Some teams didn't clean as thoroughly as they should have, leaving
a mess for the next team. Or, they misjudged and were in the kitchen
longer than anticipated, making time short for the next team.
3) The fighters (yes, the autocrat scheduled fighting for the day) did
not get most of the courses. Not happy campers. In fact, some of them
went to fast-food restaurants to get something to eat!
4) Waiting in line. The food was kept warm (served in a cafeteria), but
the waiting wasn't much fun. And those at the end of the line (which
was usually our Shire members) often got shorted on servings, or else
gallantly did without so a guest could try the dish.
5) Clean-up between courses was impossible. We couldn't wash our feast
gear in the sinks in the bathrooms, of course, and we couldn't use
the kitchen. Ultimately what we did was buy a LARGE supply of paper
towels and hand them out to people to wipe down their dishes. Not a
good solution, but at least it was something.
6) No real activities were planned for the day other than a Hall of
Arts and Sciences, fighting, and a rapier demo. Many people
complained of being bored during the space between courses.
On the whole, it was an interesting way to do a feast, and I'd like to see it
done again, but perhaps with some better planning. Most people had a good time.
I wouldn't like to see this done ALL the time, however --- I agree that each
event calls for its own style of feast. I've attended many, many events and have
enjoyed every feast (even the ones with awful food --- usually *something's*
edible and as always, the company is wonderful!).
About pineapples --- I write a monthly column called 'From the Kitchens of
Castle Gillywick --- Willihilda, the Kitchen Wench' where there's a 3 to 4
page 'adventure' and at the end is a medieval recipe. One of the recipes had
pineapple in it, and I did (a small amount of) research to make sure it wasn't
something inconcievable. From what I found, pineapples were from the West
Indies and were making their way north into Europe by the 1400's. However,
I could be wrong...
Therica
--'--,--<@
From: ctallan@epas.utoronto.ca (Cheryl Tallan)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Feast formats
Date: 4 Nov 1993 14:57:05 -0500
Organization: EPAS Computing Facility, University of Toronto
In article <9311040035.AA12786@milo.uucp> ayotte@milo.UUCP (Robert Arthur
Ayotte) writes:
> Unto the Gentles here Does Lord Horace of the soon to be full status
>shire of Rudivale in the Crown Principality of Northshield in the Kingdom of
>the Middle send Greetings and hopes of a mild Winter.
>
> I Beg thee, does it seem that in your area most feasts start with
>the big three? Does the first course start with BREAD/FRUIT/CHEESE! With
>very few exceptions?
> This has been a subject to ponder for a long time as I know that in
>period that was not a typical thing....
I am puzzled by this. I realize that most of the menus that have come
down to us do not show bread, cheese and fruit at the beginning but
other sources do seem to indicate that it was, at least in some times
and places, quite common.
Most illuminations of tables being set, as well as instructions to
panters (who carved the trenchers) seem to indicate that bread was
available on the table at the beginning of the feast. While bread may
not have appeared on the menus, there is plenty of evidence that it
wasn eaten. Perhaps it went straight from the pantry to the hall and
did not pass through the hands of the Cook and his staff. After all,
it was they who wrote the cookbooks wherein are the menus that we
have. What would cause you to believe that bread was not available at
the beginning of a feast?
Likewise, while we have no way of knowing what began a meal for much
of period, we do have evidence from fifteenth century England. There
are a number of "Courtesy Books" which include instructions for
servers, including the laying of tables. the seating of guests, the
serving of meals, etc. They clearly indicate that fruit [especially,
and here I'm quoting from memory and I haven't read the book in a
while, so please correct me if I've got them wrong, cherries, grapes,
strawberries amd the like] and soft cheese were considered a good way
to start the meal. If you want to check this for yourself, look at
_John Russell's Boke of Nurture_ available in the Early English Text
Society's _Early English Meals and Manners_ (later re-released as _The
Babee's Boke_). John Russell mentioned that these were to be got from
the pantry as well. This might explain why they weren't in the menus,
not requiring the activities of the cooks. I also recall Platina
(Venice, 1475) suggesting fruit to start the meal with. I don't recall
if he mentioned cheese. I am at school now and don't have my copy handy.
So it would seem to me that bread, fruit and cheese are quite
reasonable choices for the beginning of a feast. You say that in
period you "know" that it was not a typical thing. Perhaps you have
been reading sources unavailble to me or that I have not found? I
would love to hear of them. I'm always looking to enlarge my library.
Around here, bread, fruit and cheese are not the most common starters
for feasts. Bread is always there and sometimes hard cheese (like
cheddar). John Russell suggests hard cheese for closing the feast.
Fruit is not frequent. Often instead we have "crudites" (cut up carrot
and celery sticks) something I think was not likely found. And of
course, there is always the "honey butter" (except once, when I was
Clerk of the Kitchen).
David Tallan (Who, as Thomas Grozier is no longer the Lord Mayour of
the honorabyll and auncient Cite of Eueruuycke, but rather, just an Alderman)
tallan@flis.utoronto.ca
From: ayotte@milo.UUCP (Robert Arthur Ayotte)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: feast formats
Date: 4 Nov 1993 15:39:31 -0500
Organization: The Internet
Firsts for menus
Italian is the Antipasi, with over 150 ways of preparing black olives alone
and thousands of other small period meal openers. Interesting note is that
traditional italian desert until modern times was simple, fresh fruit
loating in chilled water.
French - a soup or cool prepared vegetables as a first course, bread served
with the entire meal. Greens in season
Spain - (a bit out of my area) but I would guess that again we are talking
soup or appatizers, bread being present with the meal.
England - boiled cabbage followed by more boiled cabbage and a desert of
boiled cabbage (ok so I am joking, desert would have been different) ;).
Again soup is the starter, or right into a main course that is heavy on
meats and vegetables in season
I am still digging for refferences and have a lead to one that lists
7 countries typical menus from around the 11th C. One thing that is
important to remember is that folks are not expecting these changes!
Recently I did an italian meal, served no butters (the bread was to be used
to dunk push scrape and hold the food, not to be eaten by itself) and fruit
at the end, I got some very strange looks from folks expecting a grand
desert and they got fruit instead. Interesting part was all but one dish in
that traditional italian meal was vegetarian, I had not planned it that way
either.
.
From: bhaddad@lunacity.com (Barbara Haddad)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Feast formats
Date: Thu, 04 Nov 93 13:08:41 PST
Organization: LunaCity BBS - (Clan Zen Relay Network) Mountain View, CA
> time and research?
> We spend a great deal of time researching costuming, illumination,
> heraldry and many other aspects, is not the feast worty of effort. Can we
> not try harder to eliminate potatos and corn except in late period feasts
> where they are presented as oddities? I really is not that difficult.
> Perhaps I am seeing a localized thing, in the groups that surround
> those that wish to reply is this also true?
>
> Horace
My memory is rather poor for book titles, but I believe there is a
book 'out there' called "The Medieval Feast" which features recipes from
1200AD & earlier. (I have a few copies of some recipes still; but many
of the foods ... lack something in the taste department.)
When I did a 'feast' for a medieval history class, I recall that
of the options listed a standard feast would begin with breads on the
table, a fish soup & chutneys. Then a stew would be served (I chose
'Rota', a mixed meat/fruit/nut stew that is pretty tasty). Then more
bread would be brought out & the poultry course; followed by the red meat
course &/or the pork course. More chutneys and baked fruit came next. A
variety of wines were served with the meal ........... & I cheated --
serving fruit pies, along with the meat pies. I also included an old
cookie recipe that's a very old family recipe (Swedish).
Got an 'A' for the feast, BTW (& an instructor who laughed about
getting bombed on the wine).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just a thought from Barbara Haddad -> (bhaddad@lunacity.com)
LunaCity BBS - Mountain View, CA - 415 968 8140
From: DSKULLY@lando.hns.COM (DAWN)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Feast formats
Date: 4 Nov 1993 17:29:58 -0500
Organization: The Internet
Robert Arthur Ayotte <milo!ayotte@plains.nodak.edu> asks
== I Beg thee, does it seem that in your area most feasts start with
== the big three? Does the first course start with BREAD/FRUIT/CHEESE! With
== very few exceptions?
Greetings milord,
I hail from Atlantia. I have been to several many feasts and I find that many
start with bread. I have enjoyed varied toppings for the bread. My favorite was
a puree of black olives, garlic and olive oil (others at table didn't
appreciate it as much as I did and I ended up finishing it off with my spoon -
yum :) After the bread (well, mostly with it), things tend to vary. Vegetables
soaking in vinegar are popular with some of our cooks and yes, we do often get
cheese. I've also had a first remove include green leafy vegetables such as
kale (again with vinegar). And I've also seen several feasts open with bread
and soup (or bread IN soup). I don't associate fruit with the start of a feast
however, so if it's on the table, I don't notice it.
I was once assistant cook at a feast where the feast-o-crat was determined not
to start his feast in a common manner. He decided to do a Welsh rarebit. It was
bread and cheese with a difference. Unfortunately, the cheese sauce was begun
far too early. DISASTER! While it had a marvelous flavor, the cheese solids had
separated out. The kitchen medic crew took over and saved the day by pouring
out the liquid, thickening it with flour, and serving it over the bread. It
tasted fine and looked perfect. We had this solid stuff left over, however, so
we poured it in a pan and stuck it in the refrigerator. It hardened up and
tasted good so we cut it into bite-size pieces and served it at high table as
Spiced Smoked Cheese. Everybody was happy, but the Spiced Smoked Cheese was so
popular that our feast-o-crat may find himself in trouble if someone asks him
to repeat it.
Aurora
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lady Aurora Astore Dawn C Skully
Barony of Storvik Germantown, MD
Kingdom of Atlantia dskully@lando.hns.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: ayotte@milo.NOdak.EDU (Robert Arthur Ayotte)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Feast Formats
Date: 4 Nov 1993 22:25:23 -0500
Organization: North Dakota State University ACM, Fargo ND
In article <4gqMKdq00iUyQ=mbto@andrew.cmu.edu> you wrote:
: Okay, so maybe medieval feasts didn't start with bread, fruit, and
: cheese, but we are 20th century people living on budgets. Bread, fruit,
: and cheese are inexpensive ways to fill people up. They are served early
: so people eat less of the expensive items. That is why most feasts I
: have seen start with these.
Just because it's cheap does not mean it's the ONLY way to go.
I fill people up on soups and stews early, as was done in period in many
countries. I have often wondered
if the move the three is just done becasue it's easier and expected.
: There are other options. You can leave these things out entirely.
: You would then have to raise prices or cut back on food. Raising prices
: means fewer people attend the event, which may cause financial burdens
: on the Autocrat. Cutting back on food means people may go away hungry.
: Every feast I've seen runs on this simple equation: If people get filled
: up, they have a good time and the event is a success; if people go away
: hungry, they are annoyed and the event is not a success.
B
I recently did a period italian feast for 150with my budget
at $3.50 a head. It started with Antipasti (which do not have to be
expensive) followed by a lentil soup (under 20 cents a head) that was
well recieved, then a pasta in white sauce, followed byOA a chicken dish
with a couple of different roasted vegetables, and fruit for desert.
The point is that I did not have to cut back quality, quantity
or cost any more. People left well fed and fed in a timely maner
(cough..that was an interesting event...but I digress). I had enough
left over that I could have fed many more, but I always over cook. I
came in on budget. happy and fed.
: In period, most feasts were served by nobility or royalty, and they
: were usually fairly well of financially. But, our nobility in the SCA,
: does not pay for the feast themselves, the group does. So, for the most
: part, the question boils down to 'do we make money with a less period
: feast or lose money on a very period feast ?' Most groups hate the idea
: of losing money even if they have thousands of dollars in the bank. Most
: people choose to save money. If people can think of ways around this,
: I'm open to suggestions.
With a bit of research and a knowledge of cooking one can find
the recipies that will work. We have a great many groups here that area
very isolated. Lack of period seems to be the result of that isolation.
As of now the closest group is 80 miles,next is 150miles, then it gets
much further. There have not been that many people setting examples
I am guessing.
: At most events I've seen, 10th century Norsemen mix freely with
: Renaissance Italians. It seems to me that some bread and cheese slightly
: out of place is a minor thing in comparison. While time specific events
: are done, they are not nearly as well attended. In the end, the whole
: idea of the SCA is to have fun (whether by RE-creation or REC-reation),
: and as long as everyone goes away happy, I would be satisfied with the
: feast.
But would it not be the best of both worlds if we can feast
in a period maner that tastes good and that does not break the bank. It
can be done and it's really not all that difficult. My feasts tend
to be getting more time specific, but that's not the whole event
and I don't usually tell folks until they get there abou the feast
(except that food allergies should be told and I work around them,
and that it will be "x" removes. I will then let them know what
country and general period, but that's for reference, not to make
folks conform. I think it's interesting to know what was served
and what foods were like, but if I sit at a feast I will wear what I
have even if I am eating Italian and sitting Andalus.
: I went to a cooking school in Portland, Oregon, some three years
: ago. One of my classmates, David Starzyk, had this to say about cooking
: for banquets: "fill 'em and bill 'em". What you are seeing is not an SCA
: condition it is a modern one. Italian restaurants always serve bread
: before dinner; same thing right ? If you want to do an absolutely period
: feast, I wish you the best of luck.
: - Fionn MacAilein
: mka Jeff Carnegie
: (aka Rafael Giovanni, aka Hieronimous d'Isigny, aka Ishmael...)
Never forget the modern mouth, cook for the people of today, true,
but there are so amny recipies still with us, or that are easily adapable
that we can make it work. If we start to think it is impossible, then soon
for us it will be. We must strive to be better than we are, failing that
we fail ourselves.
Horace
From: nusbache@epas.utoronto.ca (Aryk Nusbacher)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Feast formats
Date: 5 Nov 1993 09:36:15 -0500
Organization: EPAS Computing Facility, University of Toronto
In article <9311040035.AA12786@milo.uucp> ayotte@milo.UUCP (Robert Arthur
Ayotte) writes:
> I Beg thee, does it seem that in your area most feasts start with
>the big three? Does the first course start with BREAD/FRUIT/CHEESE! With
>very few exceptions?
I have read a colloquy of Erasmus's on the subject of inns, in which
he complains that the innkeeper keeps bringing you bread to fill you
up before he brings your food.
Plus ce la change, plus c'est la meme chose.
Aryk Nusbacher
From: DDF2@cornell.edu (David Friedman)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: feast formats
Date: 6 Nov 1993 04:59:57 GMT
Organization: Cornell Law School
Robert Arthur Ayotte wrote:
> Firsts for menus
>
> Italian is the Antipasi, with over 150 ways of preparing black olives alone
> and thousands of other small period meal openers. Interesting note is that
> traditional italian desert until modern times was simple, fresh fruit
> loating in chilled water.
Platina writes:
"For the first course it is recommended that one have all those things that
act as a laxative and which are light and not filling, such as a few apples
and pears and other such mild and pleasant things. In addition, one may
serve lettuce and such, either raw or cooked with vinegar and oil; also
eggs, especially soft-cooked, and some other confections which we call
sweets, made from spices and pine kernels and either honey or sweet juice.
"
No olives. In fact, on the basis of a quick look through the table of
contents, Platina does not seem to mention olives as a dish in their own
right. And he mentions fruit as the first course, not the desert. Later,
under apples, he says that "The sour and styptic ones are more safely taken
after a meal."
What are your sources? Are you describing period Italian practice or only
pre-modern (possibly 18th or 19th century)?
> French - a soup or cool prepared vegetables as a first course, bread served
> with the entire meal. Greens in season
Looking at Le Menagier, the first course sometimes includes a soup, along
with lots of other things, and sometimes not. At least one of the menus has
salted olives in the first course.
Master Chiquart's first service is "the large meats, that is beef and
mutton ...and another large platter should be served beside with the salt
meats ... And with this, there should be served a white bruet over capons
... ." He then has some other bruets. All of them are more like sauces over
cooked meat or fowl than what we would call soups, although the dividing
line is not a sharp one.
Again, what are your sources for the French first course in period?
> England - boiled cabbage followed by more boiled cabbage and a desert of
> boiled cabbage (ok so I am joking, desert would have been different) ;).
> Again soup is the starter, or right into a main course that is heavy on
> meats and vegetables in season
Through the fifteenth century, English and French cooking are very
similar--many of the same recipes, and at least roughly similar patterns of
service.
" Okay, so maybe medieval feasts didn't start with bread, fruit, and
cheese, but we are 20th century people living on budgets. Bread, fruit,
and cheese are inexpensive ways to fill people up. They are served early
so people eat less of the expensive items. That is why most feasts I
have seen start with these. ... So, for the most
part, the question boils down to 'do we make money with a less period
feast or lose money on a very period feast ?'" (Fionn MacAilein)
My impression is that it is at least as easy to keep costs down on a period
feast as on a modern one, and perhaps easier. You might want to look at my
Lady Wife's article in T.I. a year or two back describing a very
inexpensive, low work, period Islamic feast she did. All of the Grey
Gargoyles free feasts have been reasonably period--and I doubt that any of
them ran much over $3/head for ingredient costs, although I could be wrong.
David/Cariadoc
DDF2@Cornell.Edu
From: WOLC4977@splava.cc.PLattsburgh.EDU
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Feast Formats
Date: 7 Nov 1993 15:43:01 -0500
Organization: SUNY at Plattsburgh, New York, USA
Good Gentles All,
I am at a loss as to where the problem arises from feast prices.
The MOST EXPENSIVE event I have recently attended was $15 (I think, it may
have been less). Question - When was the last time you went out for
an EVENING - for that much? I realise that there are those among us who are
struggling to make ends meet. However, ask yourself how much you would spend
on food alone if you were at home.
As for Feast Format, I had the honor of Feastocrating (Someone was
right - that is a LOUSY title) the Northern Army War Camp this past July.
Thank God for all those who pitched in to help - It was my first time.
By ordering in bulk from a local restaurant supplier, and doing a little
bargain hunting, the shire was easily able to feed the 180 people who were
actually on board AND MAKE A LITTLE MONEY!
We planned on having a buffet lunch, A large evening FEAST, and lunch
the following day. Each morning we provided Coffee, Tea, or Hot Cocoa,
Cheese, Bread, and Fruit.
Lunch on Saturday - Knockwurst (the real stuff, not Oscar Meyer)
German style Saurkraut w/ Ham and Brown Sugar
German Potato Salad (admittedly late or OOP)
Kosher Dill Pickles
Rolls
Spicey Mustard
Lemonade and Apple Cider
Apples and Pears for Dessert
Feast - A whole roast BEAST
spitted, and turned from 7 am till 6 pm
Roasted Turkeys
eight 25#'s
A Bread Stuffing
Boiled Carrots
Boiled Onions
Boiled Potatoes
(OK, I admit it - they're OOP - they weren't my idea)
Six different kinds of breads
Three kinds of Butters
Three kinds of Cheese
Lemonade and Apple Cider
and for dessert...
Fresh Strawberries dusted with powdered Sugar
While I will admit that this is fairly LATE period in a lot of its
elements - It was also simple, appetising foods that EVERYONE seemed to enjoy.
A lot of people are MEAT and POTATO's eaters. EVERYONE had enough to eat -
some people went through the buffet three or four times - and we still had
some leftovers. We got rave reviews, and a half dozen letters of thanks.
I also am willing to admitt that the menu was somewhat dictated by
people's expectation's from past years -TRADITION!
There are many thing's I would change next time, but the maxim
'Keep it simple' will stay with me for a long time! The next Feast I cook
for will also be served in removes if possible - much more 'Period'
but also more difficult when serving 150 - 200 people (Any suggestions from
people who have done this with large numbers?).
With all the things that went wrong, and those that unexpectedly
went right, We stayed well within our budget, We bought a couple of Kegs for
the Inn for Saturday Night, and we STILL MADE A LITTLE BIT OF MONEY!
I Would be VERY interested in Hearing from others who have done large
scale Feasts - ie Over 100 Gentles.
Your Humble Servant,
Robert of Norwood
The Shire of Coldwood
From: jtn@nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Feast formats
Date: 7 Nov 1993 20:35:39 GMT
Organization: The Rialto
Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.
Horace has been writing about ways to open feasts. I should begin by
making two points. First, I utterly agree that far too many people in
the SCA make up ways to do meals from wholecloth that have little to
do with period, and aren't particularly effective. Second, I also
agree absolutely that variety is not only the spice of life but also
the heart of what makes something feel like feasting. That said, though,
I find the particularly claims he makes about period cooking not only
unintuitive, but counter to both all the period sources I have looked
at and all the modern scholarship I have read. I am very sympathetic
with what he calls his desire to synthesize wholes rather than memorize
details. But I don't see how we can synthesize accurate wholes out of
details that just don't seem to be so.
> One thing that we tend to forget about period cooking was that
>the vast majority of cooking was done by people that could not write, much
>less read. They followed verbal traditions and carried with them the
>recipies of the peasant to the tables of the upper class.
What is your evidence for this? Everything that I have seen, from literary
accounts to household records to pictures to surviving recipes contradicts
it. First, cooks for upper class households were _not_ peasants. They
had very likely never eaten peasant food. They had trained for a lifetime
in upper class kitchens, which was what it took to get someone to get food
onto the table for hundreds reliably every day without embarrassing the
head of house. Second, the copious surviving kitchen and household accounts
profoundly belie the view that servants as a class were overwhelmingly
illiterate. It is worth remembering that the John Russell who wrote the
_Boke of Nurture_ in the 14th C not only was himself a servant, but was
writing to _aspiring_ servants of upper class households. He obviously
had an audience, since copies of his work survived. Third, the dishes
recorded both in literature and in household accounts tend to correspond
to those recorded in cookbook collections. While I would be willing to
admit that the cookbooks alone might be giving a skewed account, it is
hard to believe, for instance, that Chaucer consulted them before commenting
on what people ate. The literary evidence, therefore, supports the
representativity of the cookbook collections.
With all respect, we also have a _very_ rich record of what the upper class
ate. I have recorded the details of 446 recipes from the 13th through 14th
centuries in England, from collections from all over. First, they contain
a huge overlap of dishes, indicating a well developed shared cuisine. Second,
the pattern of staples is very telling.
We do have recipes for simple dishes that were probably eaten by people of
all stations, such as some of the simpler porridges, dishes of ground beans,
and the like. It is not the case, then, that dishes with familiar ingredients
were not recorded. We also have plenty of recipes that are reproduced in
collection after collection, again indicating that stock items are included.
It is not unreasonable, then, to look at the distribution of ingredients to
get some idea of what the staples were.
A normal rule of thumb is that anything whose occurrence is more than two
standard deviations off the average is probably significantly overrepresented
in a sample. Of the 446 dishes I have analyzed from 13th and 14th C England,
a particular ingredient has to occur in at least 74 recipes to be over-
represented by that rule. The following are the ingredients that occur
at least that often, from most to least common (ingredients with the same
percentage occurrence are ordered by the absolute number of recipes they
occur in):
1. salt (39%)
2. saffron (37%)
3. almonds (32%)
4. sugar (32%)
5. eggs (28%)
6. ginger (28%)
7. oil, grease, or lard (27%)
8. bread (25%)
9. wine (25%)
(Sugar is specifically as opposed to honey, which is less than 1/4 as
common.)
Notice that of the nine most popular ingredients, five are exclusively or
predominantly imported, and hence clearly _not_ significantly represented
in peasant cuisine. The two seem to intersect, in fact, at salt, eggs,
fat, and bread -- and that's not a cuisine.
I have not finished my analysis of the 15th century, but in these regards
it strongly parallels the 13th and 14th thus far (in fact, the trend is
increasing).
> Bread, cheese, fruit and preserved meat was typical of traveling
>rations served by themselves. Fruit would often be used as decoration
>and as such may often be confused when one relies on paintings for sources.
Again, what's your evidence? Mine, from household accounts and medicinal
works, is that they were eating it.
> Bread was typical fro most meals in some form, and quite
>likely it was served throughout the meal. Cheese was also used in meals but
the point I want to make is that they
>,ay have been parts of a meal, but they were not universaly served as
>the first course as we seem to do in the SCA.
First, I don't think it is universal in the SCA, though it may be in your
neighborhood. Second, though, it does seem to be universally reflected in
every account I have read that describes how tables were initially set in
England, France, or Italy through the 13th to 16th centuries. Given that
we have very poor evidence of details on this sort of matter before the
13th century, that comes as close to universal as anything one could pray
for in medieval western Europe. If we are to take our norms from anywhere,
that looks like a good source to me.
>: Cook and his staff. After all,
>: it was they who wrote the cookbooks wherein are the menus that we
>: have. What would cause you to believe that bread was not available at
>: the beginning of a feast?
> Again, the VAST majority of people were illiterate. Very few
>of the everday cooks wrote things down. Recipies passed by hands
>on learning until a learned man wrote things down.
Where are you getting this? The recipes in widely divergent cookbooks
match very closely. And I'm not sure who you mean by "everyday" cooks.
In an upper class or noble household, the master cook normally prepared
meals for anywhere from the high double digits to hundreds. These are
not little peasant ladies stirring pots. They are highly skilled and
highly trained professionals. The same is true of the upper servants in
charge of laying table and seeing that the food got on it.
If you are trying to reproduce _lower_ class eating, you are right that
cookbooks and similar sources are not to the point. But for the upper
classes, and even for people like the Menagier, an aspiring bourgeois of
late 14th C Paris, this is just not so, and we have the record to prove it.
I realize that this is probably not what you mean, but after a while,
the refrain "But why are we looking at the record? They couldn't read,"
starts sounding like an excuse to ignore history in favor of our imaginations.
Were that so, we might just as well imagine all meals beginning with
bread, fruit, and cheese as imagine anything else -- after all, if the
record isn't relevant, how do you distinguish your favorite fantasy from
any other cook's?
> Bread was sure to be available at the begining of a feast,
>durring the middle, and near the end. Was it thought of as a seperate
>course, not frequently.
This is the first thing you've said that agrees completely with what
I've read. The fact that one normally starts with certain things on the
table before the dishes get there no more makes them a "course" than the
fact that most decent restaurants in the US try to get something to drink
on the table promptly means that the first course of a modern restaurant
meal is ice water.
> You have just shown my point. There's no set beging to a meal
>even for a very limited time span.
Again, not so. We have a number of sources, and they agree. Have you
read any of the work of the outstanding culinary historians? They have
generally drawn on far wider sources than people in the SCA do, and they
can describe, in detail, the structure of meals over a given period. The
structure of meals in England and France from the 13th to 15th centuries
is known, is known to have been very stable, and is known to have been a
bit different in details between the two, but not in ways that any Scadian
is likely to notice without having them pointed out. People are very
conservative about eating.
> Why is it that we tend to start feasts
>from any era the same way? I have been cooking for 20 plus years
>and done a bit of reading so quoting sources is not my strong point,
>but I do know that things were different all over.
I would appreciate _some_ indications of your evidence here, since it
contrasts so sharply with mine. Can you give any pointers?
Cheers,
-- Angharad/Terry
From: DDF2@cornell.edu (David Friedman)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Feast Formats
Date: 8 Nov 1993 00:24:34 GMT
Organization: Cornell Law School
Robert of Norwood describes how his group fed the Northern Army War Camp,
mentioning the use of potatos and potato salad and the fact that they were
"late or OOP". He also writes that "Each morning we provided Coffee, Tea,
or Hot Cocoa" but does not note that all three are out of period for
European personae, although (some kind of) coffee is late period for
islamic and tea is period for chinese and japanese. He also refers to the
feast as "fairly LATE period in a lot of its elements."
The only element that struck me as late period was the turkeys, which seem
to have come into common use between 1500 and 1600. The rest of the feast
seemed to be a few out of period ingredients and no period recipes, late or
otherwise.
This raises a distinction that I think is worth making, since different
people use "period," in the context of cooking, to mean very different
things. "Period ingredients" are not the same thing as "period dishes," and
"period dishes" are not the same as "period feast."
For the first distinction, imagine what would happen if you tried to do
"Chinese cooking," with no Chinese cookbooks or experience of eating in
Chinese restaurtants, simply by restricting yourself to food you could buy
in Chinatown. It would have no connection with Chinese cooking--you would
simply be making whatever you usually made, minus any dishes that happened
to use things not used in Chinese cooking.
The second distinction is between a feast made up of period dishes and a
period feast--by which I mean one where the selection of dishes is an
attempt at the selection and order that might have been served at some time
and place in period. Period feasts are very rare in the Society--I have
never done one myself and can only think, off hand, of one that I have
eaten at, although I have heard of a few more and they seem to be becoming
increasingly common.
>The next Feast I cook
> for will also be served in removes if possible - much more 'Period'
> but also more difficult when serving 150 - 200 people (Robert)
One or two other people also mentioned "removes" and the question of how a
feast should be served. Two points:
1. "Remove" is not a period term for "course." It is not even an
out-of-period term for course--although it is an out of period term having
something to do with serving food. The period term for "course" is
"course."
2. I think that all of the medieval western european feast description I
have seen describe feasts served in several (typically two or three)
courses, each containing several dishes. On the other hand, the Andalusian
13th c. cookbook (European geographically but not culturally) discusses two
ways of serving a feast. The way the author recommends, as snazzy and up to
date, is each dish served separately. The way he recommends against is a
heap of rice with some of this, some of that, .... . The latter style was
apparently normal in eastern Islam and existed (since he bothered to argue
against it) in western Islam. It is also much less work to serve.
David/Cariadoc
DDF2@Cornell.Edu
From: PBOYNTON%SESCVA@snybufva.CS.snybuf.EDU (ROWENA NI DHONNCHAIDH)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Feast Formats
Date: 8 Nov 1993 19:48:01 -0500
Organization: from SUNY College at Buffalo, NY 14222
In reply to:
" I Would be VERY interested in Hearing from others who have done large
>scale Feasts - ie Over 100 Gentles.
>
> Your Humble Servant,
>
> Robert of Norwood
> The Shire of Coldwood
For $10, we just fed 160 people:
First Course: Bread with butters, Chicken stew in trenchers, Coriander
Cabbage Salat, Onyon Fromage Tarte
Second Course: Roast SUckling Pig (yes, a 120 lb pig gutted down about 80 lbs
that gave a lot of meat, roasted whole); Roasted fowl with Saracen sauce,
steak & kidney pie, honey glazed vegetables, oysters in almond sauce, applade
ryalle.
Third course: Omskirk gyngerbrede, custard lombard, pears in raspberry sauce,
marchpane cakes. there was also a subtlty of a castle filled with candied
fruit.
People were very happy, and we sent a lot of food home with people.
I take no credit for this menu or it's execution - it was entirely due to the
effort of Lady Morgana Devereux, who is a wonderful person who has cooked at
most of the Midwinter Universities I've autocrated.
(She also _wanted_ to cook this for the 12th Night bid I had put in - maybe
someday....)
----------------------------------------------------------------
Rowena ni Dhonnchaidh BITNET: PBOYNTON@SNYESCVA.BITNET
. INTERNET:PBOYNTON@sescva.esc.edu
Shire of Glenn Linn, EK
------------------------------------------------------------------
From: jlv@halcyon.com (Vifian(s))
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Feast Formats
Date: 10 Nov 1993 17:05:25 -0800
Organization: Northwest Nexus Inc.
(Terry Nutter) writes:
>Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.
>How big are feasts out there, anyhow?
And much more deleted....
Most of ours run between 125 and 200 anymore. The autocrats would like
them larger, but fortunately Hall size is a limiter.
The largest in An Tir have been 300 and 400. The 300 was served buffet
style. The 400 was sit down but had essentially one course.
The menu for the 400
Spiced Beef
Bread & cheeses
Salad
Pickled Vegetables
Cheese and sausage pastys
Stuffed Game hens
Shish Kabobs
Strawberry pudding
Only one of these was thought to be from a period source, the spiced beef.
The Budget was $5, we were slightly under.
Budgets run from $4 -$6 from which we usually divert .25 for equipment.
Usually, only two or three of the recipes are really period. This is
because of our perception that people are very conservative about what
they stick in their mouths.
We are going to do a small (50 people) banquet this spring in which
hopefully everything will be from period sources. The kitchen head hopes
to do four removes with each being from a different source. The exact
budget isn't set, but should be about $12 for food out of $20 site fee
($5 for the site, $3 for various eventualities and possibly profit). The
date is April 2, if you want to come. This is definately an experiment,
as this is a feast for the feast sake, and if successful we hope to repeat
it on an annual basis.
Hope this helps,
Jean Louis de Chambertin
Kingdom of An Tir, Barony of Madrone (Seattle, WA)
jlv@halcyon.com
--
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From: PBOYNTON%SESCVA@snybufva.CS.snybuf.EDU (ROWENA NI DHONNCHAIDH)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Feast Formats
Date: 11 Nov 1993 07:39:53 -0500
Organization: from SUNY College at Buffalo, NY 14222
Angharad wrote (wistfully):
"And here, I read regularly about feasts whose budgets are "only" $8, $10,
and more. HOW MUCH DO YOU GUYS GET, TO COOK A FEAST WITH, ANYHOW? "
First, the rest of you would probably consider Robert of Norwood from
Coldwood, and I, from Glenn Linn, to be almost from the same group, as our
groups are border neighbors. There aren't any SCAdians for the 100 miles
of Adirondack Mountains between us, but we are very much from small groups
in the Northern Region of the East Kingdom.
Most of our events are small ones - with an average of between 80 and
100 people. Unless we get a Kingdom event bid. But even that probably only
means between 150 and 250 people signing up for the feast, and at things like
the King & Queen's Archery Championship, etc., maybe only 75 to 100.
So unless we are talking 12th Night (which this year is planning on a
feast for 250 people), we ARE talking much smaller numbers than you are.
And generally, the feast price is about $5, but again, many of our
events are outside ones, or in small halls with limited kitchen space, it
limits the variety. The feast I posted was unusual for our area, and took
a massive effort by a cook who wanted a showy meal.
IT is not unusual for many areas in the East, though. I was at a
Textile Collegium in the Barony of Delftwood (about 3 hours from here, Syracuse
NY) that, for an $8 site fee (offboard was $3) had:
First Remove: Soup a l'Oselle, trenchers, hard cooked eggs, crisps, mussels,
scallions, tripes, cretone of new peas, sauces, apple cider, fresh fruits.
Second Remove: salade de choux rouges, roast capons, le farc normand (roasted
onion stuffing) norse pies (meats), jelly of slimy fish, sieved beans,
pain de honfleur (whole wheat bread), unsalted butter (notice unflavored, too!)
green verjuice sauce, cold sage suace, garlic jance suace, fresh spring water,
parti-colored white dish, la fallue.
Third Remove. Hulled barley gruel, boiled salted po4rrk, oyster ragout, faulx
grenon, camembert cheese, watercress greens, pain brie/norman bread, butter,
golden toasts with pureed apples and cream.
They called it a Norman meal, and the variety was enticing. They also
supplied a menu with recipes, which is one of the wonderful customs of the area.
Thescorre (rochester, NY), has many wonderful feasts like this, usually
also for $5-$8, and hs also supplied the recipes in a menu booklet. But then
there are the events that are based on an ambitious menu, such as the one I
posted - these tend to be higher in price because we are going for more costly
items and ingredients. Pork would have been a cheaper way to go than to try
to get a whole pig at just the moment we needed it. Pork we could have bought
on sale, or through a meat wholesaler with lots of advance notice for a cheaper
price, and kept it frozen. The cook didn't have to bake so much bread, or the
trenchers for the stew.
12th Night prices tend to reflect a groups trying for an impressive
menu (well,that's what the menu we used at that feast was, what we had wanted
to do for a 12th Night). Prices have run as high as $25 to attend 12th Night
and eat on board. I don't even try to eat on board at 12th Night anymore,
i like to eat before 9 or 10 pm, especially after a long day, and I'm one of
those middle-aged, back to college, self-supporting poor types who can't
justify spending that much (I also don't eat very much).
The only other times prices get to $15 or more is when the feast is
a core, or the only, part of the event. There are a couple of other annual
events where it's a $25 charge, and those are the ones I mentioned earlier -
the whole event is based on an ambitious menu.
But if it makes you feel any better, $5 to $8 is an average price,
and $10 is usually an ambitous meal. I autocrat a lot, usually 3 times a
year, and tend to keep an eye on What Other Events Are Doing just as a habit.
I'm sorry I rambled - it's 6:30 am on the East Coast, and I'm on my way to
work. If anyone is interested, I'll type in the Norman Feast menu, and
recipes, and send them via email. And if anyone is interested in the 83
classes that are being offered for EKU on Nov. 20, I should have the latest
schedule updates on Monday or Tuesday.
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: albion@castle.ed.ac.uk (D J B Hunter)
Subject: Re: Feast Formats
Organization: University of Edinburgh
Date: Thu, 11 Nov 1993 13:18:05 GMT
>>Greetings, all, from Angharad ver' Rhuawn.
>
>>How big are feasts out there anyhow?
Ours are rather small...
The SCA feasts have ranged from 6 to 20 people; the feasts
done under the auspices of the University society get 20 to 40 people.
We always do period food (i.e. recipes from medieval sources) and have
had two feasts based directly on medieval menus (the best was the Feast
of the Fowl, with almost every kind of game bird consumed, plus
subtleties of swan, peacock and cockatrice, finishing with hippocras
and gold-leafed wafers).
The usual budget is around 5 pounds per person, which buys about the
same amount of food as 5 dollars in the US (most foods are more
expensive here, possibly excepting game (I haven't priced dormice)).
Caitlin de Courcy
Harpelestane
(Edinburgh, Scotland)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: wklosky@nitro.mines.colorado.edu
Subject: Re: Vegetarian feasts, Dietary Restrictions
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 1993 17:39:34 GMT
Organization: rec.org.sca
In article <2d8ikc$1l6@server.cs.vt.edu> jtn@nutter.cs.vt.edu (Terry Nutter)
writes:
>Around here, people will cheerfully scarf up anything with savory toasted
>cheese on it. (STC is Digby's blend of melted cheeses, intended for what
>amount to medieval grilled cheese sandwiches, but served as a vegetable sauce,
>on the dubious basis that he suggests that if you like, you can chop up some
>asparagus in it. Then again, he also suggests chopping up anchovies in it,
>and ditto for ham, and I've never seen it served over fish -- which I haven't
>tried at home -- or ham -- which I have, and it's good, but it isn't what
>he had in mind either.) The most common veggie under it is broccoli, followed
>closely by green beans, and there's _never_ any left over.
She is correct! STC, although akin to injecting cholesterol straight into your
arteries, has the magical quality of disappearing. Everytime I have ever made
it, the diners behaved like addicts, coming back to the kitchen with a hunk of
bread and asking if the pot had been washed yet...
Of course, there was that one Twelfth Night at the hotel where we had to use
_their_ chefs and they served the STC cold over _green beans_ and the secanjabin
_hot_ (gack!) I must say, people grumbled but they _still_ ate the STC.
They did _not_ drink the 'bin until ice was brought around, though...
>But I serve at least one vegetable and one fruit or two vegetables with
>every course at every feast I cook for, and with the notable exception of
>salad (and one dish of turnips that was wonderful when initially done, but
>MUTATED in the warming oven -- a hazard I now know to pretest for B^), I
>don't see signficantly more leftover vegetables than leftover anything else.
>Maybe Atlantians just eat more veggies?
I would argue that is something more akin to the fact that they, like I, have
never met an Angharad dish that they didn't like :) With the copious research
you do, and the test-cookings of the recipes until you get it just right, the
end result can be nothing short of excellent.
I will never forget one of the cooking sessions at your house where Otto slurped
up two helpings of the turnip, carrot, and parsnip dish (Rapyes, Carrots, &
Pasternaks ?) (along with the other test dishes) without realizing he was eating
the dreaded P & T words!!
(Otto and I really miss your feasts!!!But then, BD _is_ home, and there is
nothing like Home Cooking ;)
Tra,
branwynn ottersby
Oldcastle Outlands Satellite
Caer Galen, Outlands (sort of a Black Diamond West, eh? :)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: augment@world.std.com (Michael Bergman)
Subject: Re: Bathing in The Advocate
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Tue, 13 Dec 1994 04:08:21 GMT
We have had at least one event here in Carolingia where a bowl and
pitcher was brought around to the tables for washing before the
feast. I do not recall if another was brought round after. I believe
that there may have been several such events, but there is only one
of which I am certain of my recollection.
--Harald Longfellow
--
--Mike Bergman Voice: (617) 271-0230
Augment Systems, Inc. email: augment@world.std.com
19 B Crosby Drive
From: IVANOR@delphi.com
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Tristan, of feasts and favors
Date: 27 Mar 1995 05:17:44 GMT
Organization: Delphi Internet Services Corporation
Wonderful suggestions re: inventive/inexpensive feasts. You asked about
the period status of rice and peas.... I don't know about the rice, but peas
are absolutely period, though often served in a form no longer obvious as
peas... pease porridge or pease pudding. (This is a form horrendous to me,
but then I'm not fond of mushy things.)
Carolyn Boselli Host of Custom Forum 35 SCAdians on Delphi
Ive Annor M'Quhairr of Sighty Crag, AoA, Sen. Canton Dragon Forge, EK
From: fnklshtn@ACFcluster.nyu.edu
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Tristan, of feasts and favors
Date: 28 Mar 1995 02:42:55 GMT
Organization: New York University, New York, NY
Hey, would that be kind of like Humus?
There's by the way a Russian Jewish thing like Humus but made from Kidney beans
rather than Chic Peas (actually from any beans that happen to come your way).
Excellent food and majorly easy to make.
Interested?
Peace!
Nahum haKuzar
From: MS7539@CONRAD.APPSTATE.EDU (Stewart, Marie Alston )
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Tristan, of feasts and favors
Date: 18 Mar 1995 21:28:01 GMT
Organization: APPALACHIAN STATE UNIVERSITY
Greetings all, and especially to you Tristan --
First of all feasts... While it is true that we autocrats
and cooks have to devise a dinner that will fulfill many roles
it doesn't mean that we have to be limited... I am also
from a small shire and we are also in the position of not being
able to 'afford' to lose money on a meal... so for us the
process goes something like this...
First of all
Keep it simple, the KISS principle at work,
Make sure that it is all edible
See that it can be cooked easily on the site
Make sure that there is plenty of everything
Make sure that no one ingredient shows up in everything
REMEMBER our vegetarian compatriots
Try to keep it period... and Keep It Simple...
however I often find myself agreeing with Tristan... about the
ubiquitous and flat cheddar cheese, plain souless white bread,
rice and peas that seem to be leftovers from the last event...
Argh!... So we always keep the staples on hand, some people just
won't eat it if it doesn't look like it came from the Grocery
store...
but the main fair is perhaps a honey wheat bread instead
of a flat white, sure cheddar is on hand, and a plain swiss, but
if you look on the platters there is also a stilton that will knock
your socks off for the more adventurous...
In place of rice and peas (just how period is this anyway?) there
is a large bowl of mashed turnips and onions, chances are people
who like mashed potatos will like these...
* Then there is at each table a small platter of the unusual...
an Italian foccacia, some brie, sufficina, and other items that
are either unusual or period (with any luck it will be both, and
edible to boot)
We have found that scattering the gems among the straw, as we say,
tends to work the best... also make sure that your rare or
expensive items are already portioned out plainly... that prevents
one person with a large appetite and no manners from scarfing
down all of it and leaving nothing for the others at the table.
(It doesn't happen often, but its not a bad precaution to take)
And as to favors... Tristan I hope that I didn't beat on you too
badly?... And I hope you know that it was all in fun... Good
Luck with creating your feast... or influencing others... Some
thing else you might try is going off board with a hamper of your
own making... and sharing all your wonderful and exotic dishes
with others... I've had luck with this tactic... and enjoyed it
to boot...
Sincerely,
Bridgette Kelly MacLean
The MacLean of Atlantia
From: jkrissw@aol.com (JkrissW)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: Feast Costs (was Re: Non-member surcharge)
Date: 20 Nov 1995 06:03:03 -0500
Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
In article <48l6fm$ej4@hugo.lloyd.com>, pat@lloyd.com (Pat McGregor)
writes:
>6) Since you can't ask for payment in advance (kingdom custom),
> you have to take whatever price you can get the day/week of.
>
Which kingdoms have this chaotic policy? Caid commonly has
pre-registration for major event banquets, in response to announcements
printed in the Crown Prints a couple of months prior to the event. I
can't imagine how event autocrats could get a realistic estimate on the
number of attendees without it, nor how the responsible parties would
gather resources for the food required for a large banquet (say 12th Night
or one following a Coronation, especially).
Daveed
<the end>
Copyright © Mark S. Harris (Lord Stefan li Rous)
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Comments to author: stefan@florilegium.org
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