SC - big spice question

[david friedman]

At 12:49 PM -0500 4/9/99, Helen wrote:
>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.

1. I did a calculation based on Du Fait de Cuisine, which came out as about
one part of spice (all spices combined) to a hundred parts of meat, by
weight. 400 people require about 150 lbs of meat (pure boneless meat),
hence about 1.5 lb of all spices combined.

2. Some of the things you list correspond to recipes in the _Miscellany_;
you can look at them and calculate the amount of spice for your number of
guests. It is webbed at:

http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/cariadoc/miscellany.html

3. My lady wife points out that it is worth noting that you don't need very
much saffron.

David Friedman
Professor of Law
Santa Clara University
ddfr at best.com
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/


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