SC - FW: [scribes]: subscribing

[Jane M Tremaine]

At 7:47 AM -0400 6/13/00, Jenne Heise wrote:

>I have a question that has bugged me for a while.
>In the SCA, we concentrate on re-creating specific document period
>recipes, but don't really pay much attention to period _menus_. Why is
>that?

I think a large part of the answer is that you can't do a period menu 
until you have quite a lot of recipes worked out from a single 
cuisine. You need enough to produce a selection that is consistent 
both with period practice and with the tastes of the people you will 
be feeding.

Until fairly recently, there weren't many of us who had enough 
recipes from a single cuisine. The availability of recipes has been 
increasing rapidly in the last few years, largely as a result of the 
net, so it may now be practical for a good many more people.

And I should add that feasts with period menus have been done--just 
not very many. But then, the practice of doing feasts where all the 
recipes are period has only been becoming common in recent years, and 
only in some areas.

I should also add that what I mean by a "period menu" is not exactly 
following a menu of a specific feast, but using surviving menus from 
a particular time and place to figure out what the pattern was--how 
many courses containing what sorts of dishes--and doing that. I don't 
know if anyone has done a meal that was exactly following a period 
menu, although I expect it could be done fairly easily for some of Le 
Menagier's. Chiquart, on the other hand ...  . Especially done to 
scale.

David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/