SC - Re: menus and dish sizes

[ChannonM at aol.com]

In a message dated 6/14/00 2:31:19 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
owner-sca-cooks at ansteorra.org writes:

> One other problem with period feast menus is that American idea that you
>  "have" to eat everything on the table.  Upper classes through the 19th
>  century only tasted the various platters, therefore serving a multitude
>  of dishes was fine.  --And they probably weren't massive platters at
>  that.
>  
>  I've been toying with doing a feast with twice the dishes, half the
>  portions.  i figure that gives room to experiment and still feed
>  people--unless they're finicky.  In which case, I don't care.
>  
>  Morgana

I did pretty much that at Clancy Day this year. I served 15 dishes, with 
carefully controlled portions ie each person could have eaten 1/10 pie, 1-3oz 
piece of fish that was then battered etc. 

One person actually recognized that the food served first was not in huge 
abundance and that I was controlling how much they could wolf down in the 
first and second courses. This ws deliberate and planned and allowed me to 
provide a number of dishes that I otherwise might not have been able to work 
into the menu due to cost prohibition. Now not everyone appreciated that, 
especially when they loved that particular dish and there was no more to be 
had (I kind of felt it left them desiring more vs leaving them hungry since 
there were X number of dishes to follow)

No one could have gone away hungry even if they ate 1 spoon of everything 
served. Those who were too picky will always be too picky, those who are 
glutons welll........

Apparently, there were some who thought there was too much fish (served a 
salmon pie and battered fish) and those who thought there was too little 
fish(probably really liked one or the other fish dish). Go figure.

As for judging how well the food was by what came back, lets just say, people 
were filling zip lock bags that they brought to the event before the feast 
food could be taken away!

Hauviette