SC - Back from Boston

[Robin Carroll-Mann]

In a message dated 6/11/2000 10:38:10 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
mercedes_of_the_flame at hotmail.com writes:

<< What makes a 14th/15th century feast a feast?  Is it recipe's drawn 
 specifically from that era?  Must it be from only one country or from 
 several unless otherwise specified?>>

Mileage is going to vary widely on this.  To my mind, if you want a 14/15th 
century feast, you should use the wealth of available recipes from the time 
period.  Many of these have already been worked out into modern recipe style, 
with cooking times and temperatures, amounts of ingredients, etc, and are no 
harder to work with than a modern recipe.  I bleieve there are also surviving 
feast menus from that time period, so you could see how the people of that 
time put a feast together, and modify it to suit your needs.  As far as 
whether the recipes all come from one country, that is mostly up to you, and 
to how important you find the consistency of everything being from one place.
 
 <<What are the limitations on doing a new world themed feast?>>

Again, this is primarily up to you and the autocrat.  There's no SCA rule 
that details how feasts have to be done. My personal choice, were I to do 
such a feast, would be to work from existing recipes or at least descriptions 
of food from the time frame and countries desired.
 
<< (I think the bidding autocrat is going for a 'Columbus' theme)>>

Then I might go for 15th to 16th century Italian or otherwise Mediterranean 
food.
 
<< When should I be concerned about -exact- historic documentation?  Can use 
 estimated time frame documentation?>>

For the time period you're looking at, the recipes are pretty well 
documented.  You can decide for yourself, possibly with input from the 
autocrat, just how authentic you want the feast to be, and how tightly 
documentable.  Again, there are no rules about this kind of thing.  I 
personally choose to use only documented period recipes; other head cooks may 
choose recipes which contain only ingredients available during the time 
period; still others may not worry about where the recipes come from as long 
as people like them.  But to me, it makes no sense to go to an SCA event to 
eat food I could have any day in a restaurant, or food that is possibly 
period bu can't be proven so.  
 
<< I see all these great links to online medieval recipe's but I'm concerned 
 about all the details that go into putting together a feast menu.>>

The actual recipes are sometimes less important than the other details.  
Things like, do you know where to get good buys on bulk foods?  Do you know 
how to scale up recipes appropriately for the number you want to feed?  Very 
important, what is the kitchen like?  You really need to plan the meal around 
the kitchen you're going to use, so you can deal with the numbers of burners, 
oven space, etc.  Either that, or come up with a tentative menu and be 
prepared to be flexible if you find out that there isn't enough oven space to 
say, roast beef, and make pies.
 
<< I want to do things right and have fun at the same time. I can't have fun 
 with all these unanswered questions in my head.  >>

I can understand that!  If you know some experienced head cooks in your area, 
you might want to get together with one (or more) and have them walk you 
through the process they use, so you can see how it all works and have 
someone to fall back on if you run into a question you can't answer.

Good luck!
Brangwayna Morgan