SC - questions

[david friedman]

At 12:30 AM -0400 6/14/00, CBlackwill at aol.com wrote:

>I believe the "3 ounces of thrush in porre" was meant simply to illustrate
>the point that, while the number of dishes served at a banquet were, to our
>modern sensibilities, staggering, there is very little direct documentation
>to illuminate how "much" of each dish was served.

_Du Fait de Cuisine_ includes a shopping list, with quantities (see 
below), from which you can calculate roughly how much food was being 
produced; since it also provides a menu, you can get a rough idea of 
how much was in each dish.  My calculation was a total of about 
70,000 lbs (i.e. 35 tons) of boneless meat. That was for two meals a 
day for two days, and he doesn't say how many guests are expected.

- ---
And first: one hundred well-fattened cattle, one hundred and thirty 
sheep, also well fattened, one hundred and twenty pigs; and for each 
day during the feast, one hundred little piglets, both for roasting 
and for other needs, and sixty salted large well fattened pigs for 
larding and making soups.

And for this the butcher will be wise and well-advised if he is well 
supplied so that if it happens that the feast lasts longer than 
expected, one has promptly what is necessary; and also, if there are 
extras, do not butcher them so that nothing is wasted.

And there should be for each day of the feast two hundred kids and 
also lambs, one hundred calves, and two thousand head of poultry.

And you should have your poulterers, subtle, diligent, and wise, who 
have forty horses for going to various places to get venison, hares, 
conies, partridges, pheasants, small birds (those which they can get 
without number), river birds (those which one can obtain), pigeons, 
cranes, herons, and all wild birds - what one can find of whatever 
wild birds. And they should turn their attention to this two months 
or six weeks before the feast, and they should all have come or sent 
what they could obtain by three or four days before the said feast so 
that the said meat can be hung and each dealt with as it ought to be.

And they should provide for each day of the said feast six thousand eggs.
- ---
Note the small birds "without number." Note also that they are 
spending almost two months catching them; I don't know how they were 
preserved.

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