SC - Pennsic feast

[margali]

My take on the richard meal deal is that like any period castle, it was
essentially its own small town, very stratified and that only the topmost levels
got the best foods and sit down service. I figure the general laborors had a
refrectory that they ate basic UBG and breads [ubiquitous brown goop, like
pottages of beans, grains and the like] and drank ale, meade and small beers.
They probably ate in shifts, though I do believe that the claim that he fed 10k
and had 1k cooks and .3k servitors was hyperbole. Granted, he might have
actually had a populace of 10 k in his personal feif. He may actually have had
300 cooks-keep in mind that it was very labor intensive to cook in that period.
He also didnt differentiate between cooks, assistants/apprentices and general
kitchen sculleries and potboys in the quoted sentance.

At one time for the heck of it I tried to figure out just what it would take to
serve a basic below the salt tavern fare feast at pennsic, the only drawback for
which would have been taking up the area set aside for the battlefield to serve
as the field kitchen and serving line...have you ANY idea how many lbs of beef,
pork and chickens it takes to do 10k people [and thats not taking into account
vegans of any type!]
margali
[but it was interesting...]

Stefan li Rous wrote:

> Ras commented:
> > King Richard II is said to have fed 10000 people daily. He employed 1000
> > cooks and 300 servitors........
>
> Ah, so we *could* serve all of Pennsic at a feast! And it would be
> period! :-)
>
> Of course, it is now thought that often the numbers given for medieval
> armies were grossly overstated and exagerated. (and no Ras, I don't
> have the sources available to quote). So maybe these feast numbers
> are also.
>
> --
> Lord Stefan li Rous