SC - Perod Menu philosophy???

[dkpirolo at cts.com]

- ----------
> From: Philip & Susan Troy <troy at asan.com>
> To: SCACOOKS <SCA-Cooks at Ansteorra.ORG>
> Subject: SC - Perod Menu philosophy???
> Date: Saturday, January 17, 1998 4:53 AM
> 
> > ------------------------------
> > 
> > Date: Fri, 16 Jan 1998 11:59:34 -0800
> > From: kat <kat at kagan.com>
> > Subject: SC - help! - How to run a cooking symposium?
> 
> >         Also, (final, pathetic, whimpering plea) does ANYONE know what
the philosophy > is behind menu-planning in period times?  I feel a little
silly just choosing dishes at 
> > random and stuffing them into a remove... dare I assume that is what
everyone on this list > tends to do, since no one has come up with a better
answer as of yet?
> 
> What I generally have done in the past is to try to come up with a nice
> broad spectrum of dishes related at least somewhat by country of origin
> and century. For example, even if I don't stick entirely to one source
> for recipes, I normally try not to serve dishes from, say, Digby,
> alongside dishes from Taillevent. Apart from the English Channel in
> between, there's close to three hundred years.
> 
> I also take into account, at least to some minor extent, modern
> expectations as to what constitutes a balanced meal. Looking at each
> course as a complete table setting, I try to include a starch of some
> sort, a meat or two, a veg or two, etc. I don't have all my meat dishes
> in one course, and eight kinds of sweets at the end.
> 
> Color is also a factor, although there's no reason to assume the color
> sense of Chiquart and Wolfgang Puck would be the same. Just another
> thing to bear in mind. Don't put all your white dishes in one course,
> unless you intend to for some reason.
> 
> Finally, there's the medical end, which we have discussed already, but
> the gist is this: you should read either Terence Scully's "Art of
> Cookery In The Middle Ages", or the notes to his translation of the
> different Taillevent manuscripts. I'll bet there's something about this
> in Jonathan Miller's "The Body In Question," but I wouldn't swear to it.
> A vast simplification of it would be to suggest nuts in various forms at
> the beginning of the meal, either sugared, or as almond milk, or
> whatever (both nuts and sugar serving to open the stomach), with meat
> dishes, more or less ascending the evolutionary ladder, as it were, in
> the middle of the meal. Cheese dishes and cream would be served near or
> at the end of the meal, since cheese and other dairy products were
> thought to close the stomach up again. While this is happening, you pop
> in the spice dragees and confits, or perhaps hippocras, usually with
> wafers, as the capper. Spices provided heat, necessary for good
> digestion.
> 
> In a way, rather like dumping the baking soda in with the vinegar before
> tightening the lid...
> 
> Typical theory of the period suggested that this was the best way to
> insure perfect digestion. Of course, period menus don't always seem to
> follow the medical theory to any great extent, but then we know people
> often disregarded the advice of their doctors, then as now.
> 
> Adamantius
> troy at asan.com
>
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