WAS: SC - questions

[E. Rain]

Good morning from Eden (avoiding a project)

Jadwiga asked:
> 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?

obviously you're going to get different answers for different groups, but
here are a couple of reasons I've come across (not that I agree with all of
them, but they're reasons frequently given)

1) period menus are often HUGE containing innumerable foods on them & we
don't have the $$ or facilities to pull them off. 2) our ability to purchase
some of the obscure wildfowl/fish called for is limited.  3)if we did what
was actually done & served only a couple larks a couple plovers a couple
pigeons etc so that there was a reasonable amount of food for the say 100
people attending but in lots of differrent dishes & you only ate what was
near you, people would whine that they didn't get to try everything...

I've tried to do something along the lines of a period menu a couple of
times, but with only one roast animal in place of the 50 they call for  and
cutting down the frequency of other dishes as well simply serving the foods
in the order a medieval menu would have called for & this actually works
fairly well.  When Anne-Marie & I planned our Late period English banquet
here in Madrone a few years back we similarly looked at the menus & table
layout instructions of the time & tried to get as close as we could.  of
course the smallest course described by any of the authors of the time
contained 16 dishes if I recall correctly, so we didn't quite measure up,
except in the banquetting course maybe :->


Another thing that holds people back from recreating medieval feast menus is
the prevelance of fish which many people, like me, either can't or won't
eat.  (doesn't stop me from occasionaly including it in my menus though I
just hand that dish to someone else to cook)

And similarly there's the issue all of us trying to recreate actual medieval
recipes face - people have a misconception that "period food is icky" and in
trying to overcome that we often pander to modern tastebuds & select only
"safe" recipes which we KNOW will appeal to the meat & taters palate, and in
the process veer away from what was done...

that's enough avoidance for now, I need to get cracking.
Eden

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Eden Rain
raghead at liripipe.com