SC - questions
Bronwynmgn at aol.com
Bronwynmgn at aol.com
Mon Jun 12 17:34:28 PDT 2000
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
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