SC - Feast themes

[Stephen Bloch]

Aethelyan of Moondragon wrote:

> Something I would like to see: A feast of at least three removes, each one
> from a higher social level than the one before it (i.e., serf/peasant,
> journeyman, reasonably wealthy merchant, noble).

I have a slight problem with many of the theme feasts in this thread: as
"surveys", they are explicitly and intentionally NOT feasts that would
have been served at any time and place in the Middle Ages.  In other
words, they can only be viewed as dinners served by modern historical-
cooking enthusiasts to their modern friends, rather than as dinners
served by medieval cooks to medieval people.

Aethelyan's theme feast, however, can be slightly twisted to resemble
something that seems to have happened at actual medieval feasts: the
first course, consisting of relatively inexpensive dishes, was served to
everyone, and subsequent courses, consisting of successively daintier
dishes, were served to more and more select groups of diners.  This is
suggested in Constance Hieatt's Introduction to _Pleyn Delit_, 2ed, p.
xiv.

					mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib
                                                 Stephen Bloch
                                           sbloch at panther.adelphi.edu
					 http://www.adelphi.edu/~sbloch/
                                        Math/CS Dept, Adelphi University