SC - OOP - period recipe (1800s)

[Seton1355@aol.com]

> In a message dated 8/24/2000 9:45:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time, ddfr at best.com 
> writes:
> 
> << Is there a market for it--are there a substantial number of people 
>  who would eat period food if it were available? My guess is that the 
>  answer is "yes," provided that a reasonable fraction of the dishes 
>  were chosen to appeal to mass tastes, but I don't really know. >>

I like the idea, although more from the viewpoint of a customer than
from that of one of the cooks/organisers of such a thing. While I
might be willing to put in a few shifts as helper, scullery etc, Pennsic
is my vacation and going to the expense of flying up there to spend
all week working is not really what I want to do. Sorry, if that makes
me sound selfish.

As a customer I would be interested in the prices were not too high.
I tend to only eat the ethnic foods a little at the Pennsic Food Court
because of the prices. While I can splurge a few times for $6 Middle
Eastern food, I wasn't willing to pay the $10 for a full dinner there.
I've noticed quite a large increase in food prices at the Food Court
establishments over the past several years. While this may not seem
to be extreme for a few meals, eating twice a day at $6 per meal
begins to add up. Generally I settled for the non-period/non-ethnic
steak sandwiches because they were cheaper, yet filling.

I would be willing to pay some premium for period foods. However, I
personally would prefer to see cheaper, filling period foods than
fancy ones. Soups, stews or bruets, maybe handpies would be my
recommendation. I also would have gladly paid for some Sekanjabin
or other jalab than the frozen lemon drinks/lemonaide/tea that was
sold in the Food Court this year.

While sausage on a stick might be nice and even period, I think it
is too close to modern Turkey legs and hot dogs. Since this idea
has multiple purposes besides simply feeding folks, I would suggest
foods that have more of a "medieval" feel but not ones that are too
far out.

- -- 
Lord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
Mark S. Harris             Austin, Texas           stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****