SC - Italian Ren Feast

[Gretchen M Beck]

> > 40# Potatoes
> i've not heard of documentation supporting the existance/use of potatoes
>  in period, and all that i have heard says that they are not. perhaps
> you could disguise them by makeing a potato pasta of some sort...
> again this isn't period (that i know of) 
> 
There is some evidence that the white potato was used as an occasional
military ration in Spain and perhaps served once at the English court during
SCA period.  There is supposed to be German recipe for Rosti from the end of
the 16th Century.  In general, the white potato was ignored until the late
18th and early 19th Centuries.  The sweet potato appears to have come into
common use during the 16th Century.

 
> > 5kg of Calibaut Belgian Dark Chocolate
> the closest thing you could do for this would be to grind it fine, add
> some white chocolate and some red hot pepper and serve it as a drink.
> i believe the earliest recipie is sometime after 1600, but before
> 1700. the white c. is to add the coco butter 
> online OED has the following to say:
> >     * 1604 E. G[rimston] D'Acosta's Hist. Indies iv. xxii. 271 The
> >       chiefe vse of this Cacao is in a drinke which they call Chocolate.
> >     * 1662 H. Stubbes (title), The Indian Nectar, a Treatise on
> >       Chocolata.
> 
Trager's The Food Chronology (a sometime questionable source) places
chocolate paste for making hot chocolate in Italy approximately 1615.

> grains:
> > 50# of Corn Meal
> 
> in service,
> filip
> 
Maize appears in a painting, Summer, by Guiseppe Arcimboldo done in Milan in
1563.  Use of "gran turco" in polenta appears about 1650.  Whether the grain
was in use during the SCA period is open to question.  I think it was, but
probably limited to areas of Northern Italy.

My recommendation would be to leave them out of a 15th Century feast.

Bear 
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