SC - Pennsic Cookery Class Suggestions: Long

[Elise Fleming]

Hi,
    Francesco Sirene and I are trying to guess how much spice to use for my
feast of 400.   His historical calculations come to about an oz per guest.  But
what I am really interested in how much of the rare mail order stuff I will need
to buy a head.  (galingale, grains of paradise, saffron, cardamom)  My mom buys
spices from Sams so we will have tons of the common stuff.  She is getting all
new spices for the wedding.  I told her the ground stuff loses flavor over
time.  This is what I am trying to spice:

saffron flavored soup (recipe not picked yet any ideas for a light soup?)
Salmon (typical medieval spices cinnamon, mace etc almond milk and verjuice)
Quail (plain roasted with sauces)
Pig (plain roasted with sauces)
Venison (I may spice this up with cinnamon mixture)
Lamb (undecided but I think plain, I want stew but everyone is fighting me on
stew)
sauces: mustard, garlic, cinnamon (who's name I can't remember butit is the most
common one)
Quince pie- sweet spices

Any help would be greatly appreciated.


Thank you,

Helen

He said:

 "The Menagier de Paris (French, later 14th century) gave an account
of an actual wedding feast for 40 persons, which called for the following
spices (using the term in the modern sense--I omit things such as hulled
wheat and sugar, which he considered spices because they were bought from
the spice merchant): 1 lb. ginger, 1/2 lb. cinnamon, 1 oz. saffron, 1/8 lb.
each of cloves, grains of paradise, long pepper, galingale, mace, bay
leaves. Therefore the total of spices for the cooking was 2 5/16 lb. (37
oz., or a little less than one ounce of cooking spice per diner), and he
specifically notes that "little was left of the spices". (There were also
what he calls "spices for the chamber", such as candied orange peel and
other sweet confections, and the hypocras was bought ready-made from the
spicer, so its spices were not included in the previous total.) I suppose on
this basis your 400 persons would require somewhere around 23 pounds of
spices (but I have a feeling that the twentieth-century palate might feel
such spicing was overdoing it).

Another feast, for 16 persons, called for 14 1/2 oz. spices (again, a little
less than one ounce per diner)."



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