SC - How do you know a dish was well liked or hated?

[Beth Morris]

grizly at mindspring.com wrote:
> 
> When I have cooked/prepared the recipes for a given feast, I try to get out among the people eating it. > Some will knoiw who I am and some will not.  That gives the opportunity to do two things: 1.  ask people > I know will be honest about their personal tastes as well as their perceived quality of the dishes, and > 2.  Ask complete strangers how they enjoyed various things.

I can't second this enough.  Sometimes you'll get unsolicited accolades
(or criticisms) but you'll do better to ask.  

> ALWAYS pick a picky eater, a person with health restrictions (the more the better!) and a person reputed > as a nay-sayer or negativist.  They offer a good baseline for various evaluations to compare to my own > impressions of the food I have tasted before sending out to the diners.

Ask new people too.  A lot of experienced SCA folk will either be less
forthcoming or more accustomed to SCA-things and you may not get as
'natural' an answer as you'd like.

Tracking leftovers is good, with an eye towards the percentage returned
of the original amount.  F'rinstance, I always get lots of sauces back,
but I send out generous portions - otherwise they look silly in the
bowl, and if they *are* well liked, people will use them on things other
than they were intended for.  (I did a garlic sauce a couple of weeks
ago - it was supposed to be for the mushrooms, but I saw it on noodles,
beef, chicken, cabbage, bread & fingers before the night was out!)

Rayne(?) originally wrote:
 
> This question came to mind because at a feast I heard many people mumbling - 
> "gosh, this dish is awful".  And I thought to myself... "you know, you are 
> right.  Now who is going to tell the cook that?"  Surely he/she tasted it.  
> And was the consensus of my table, and the tables around me, the feelings of 
> most of the diners or just the palates closest to me?   

This is a hard one, partly because of the many things that could have
"gone wrong" without being apparent (except in the results) to the
casual diner.  

Someone else brought up the 'things that just aren't to one's particular
taste' issue (raisins, etc.).  This will be a case where some like it,
some don't, although if enough don't like it, the cook should take
notice.

Sometimes things just don't turn out well.  Sometimes one *batch* of
something turns out poorly (scorched soup/rice/lentils/barley is
frequently an offender in this category, along with the perennial
underdone chickens) or the recipe didn't 'expand up' as it was expected
to (crunchy rice, gloppy pasta, overly salty or sweet things, almost
anything pickled).  

Sometimes there's been a catastrophe - the ovens didn't work, an
incorrect ingredient was used, something got dropped and had to be
reconstructed from materials at hand, etc.  This happens even to the
pros (there's a really funny Iron Chef where the challenger accidentally
grabbed vinegar instead of sweet rice wine and had to start over on his
project!)  

My usual tactic is to have someone close to the cook talk to them about
what may or may not have worked (assuming I sense a consensus from folks
nearby, etc.)  That way the problems can be brought delicately to light
(and any extenuating circumstances as well) without overly hurting the
cook's feelings.

Ras says:

> << Do you ask...and hope to get an honest response?>>
> 
> No. Standing ovations, foots stomping, sword rattling, loud cheering and dish 
> pounding are usually sufficient to gage the meals acceptance by the diners.

I disagree.  Here in Atlantia at least the "toast to the cooks" and
attendant noisemaking is so set in tradition that I don't believe it's
any kind of useful indicator of the quality of the feast.  That is, I've
heard comparable noise and ballyhoo for feasts that were *spectacular*
as for feasts where I wanted to go out and get a hamburger afterwards. 
I really think cooks get a gross misrepresentation of their abilities or
the quality of their feasts if all they go by is the congratulations of
their coterie of friends and the toasts in the hall.  

Enough longwindedness...

Keilyn