SC - Feast Service

[Christine A Seelye-King]

>> in which a 16th-century Englishman is quoted as saying that
>> the people of Spain use tomatoes in a sauce "as we do mustard."
>> 
>> Alasdair mac Iain

Well, looking through "Seven Hundred Years of English Cooking", I
couldn't find the reference to tomatoes that you cite here.  BUT, I did
find something interesting in the chapter on the 18th Century about
dinner service - 
	"Dinner, having settled at about 7, underwent a change too. 
Since medival times the courses of an English dinner had been spread out
on the table, all the dishes of one course at the same time.  Some old
charts of table setting suggest that the dishes, called 'removes', near
the ends of the table could be replaced, but the others were stationed
there until the course ended.  " The passage goes on to detail the
upswing of French service, where servants would pass from table to table
to serve the food.  
	Now, I know there are descriptions of different feasts where the
various foods were continuously brought around for hours and hours, but I
have long said that the way we serve SCA feasts is not in keeping with
the dining habits of those we wish to re-create.  Trying to feed the same
thing in equal portions to every person at the feast is not the way the
cooks of the MA would have done it.  Looking at the lists of foods
available for large feasts, one has to notice that there are many more of
some things than of others, and you would have been seated near some
dishes, and not to others (some of this depending on social standing,
some simply on room on the table).   We have a very modern Banquet idea
of service, that every plate should look the same. 
	Whaddya say?
	Christianna

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