SC - Adjustments, ethical or otherwise

[Decker, Terry D.]

One of the first things I learned about cooking for large groups is you
can't please everyone, but you can certainly displease everyone.  The
easiest way to displease is prepare a bad meal.  Bad cooking is bad cooking
which has little to do with the choice of menus.

Next, logistics can kill you.  If you can't get the supplies to the site and
the food to the table, pack it in.  Again, this has little to do with the
choice of menus.

Food allergies and dislikes are handled by variety in the dishes and by
establishing the ingredients you will use in each recipe.  Adjust the
ingredients you plan to use before you get to the feast, adjust the
quantities as you cook.  It is a technique that works for most menus.

If the goal is to recreate the Middle Ages and Renaissance for our education
and pleasure, then what could be better than a perfect recreation of a
feast.  One may not be able to do it, but why not try?  Preparing enjoyable
and accurately recreated dishes from historic recipes is the goal of
historic cooking, which is one of the reasons for this list and it is
something we want to share.  My experience has been that the general
populace finds as much pleasure in a properly prepared recreation as they do
a properly prepared modern dish.  In fact, they often can not tell the
difference.  I will admit that my testers suffer for my art, but I have yet
to run out of volunteers.

Motives are not really the issue.  When it comes down to putting the food on
the table, altruism and selfishness don't matter, ability does.  If a cook
can make a tasty meal for 200, that same cook can make a tasty "perioid"
meal for 200 and almost certainly has the capacity to prepare a tasty meal
for 200 from the corpus of historic recipes.  Without an able cook, the
populace usually suffers, no matter the menu.  

The populace pays their money and they takes their chance.  They have a
right to know what is being prepared and the ingredients for each dish, so
they can vote with their money or their feet.  They do not have a right to
tell the cook how to prepare the food.  They are trusting the cook's ability
to choose dishes they will enjoy and to prepare those dishes as masterfully
as possible.  If the cook challenges himself to make the next feast better
and more historically accurate, how does that fail to serve the needs of the
populace?

The cook is not bound to the process of preparing the feast, the cook is the
process, providing the plans, parameters and skills required.  Outside of
catastrophic failure, the cook should be able to work within bounds he or
she decided to impose.  Even the greatest chefs encounter problems and the
period master cook was no exception.  There are documentably period methods
of handling common problems and errors, many still in use today.  For a
historical cook, the limit is individual knowledge, not any particular plan.
And in the face of absolute disaster, doing what is necessary to salvage the
meal is the only response worthy of a good cook, as I am sure the old
masters would agree.

Choosing to please the populace and choosing to prepare historically
accurate fare are not mutually exclusive and the cook capable of both has
ego, reputation and ability.  In fact, the ego and the ability combined with
a willingness to test one's skill are most likely what gained the cook a
reputation and produced the feasts memorable for their quality and quantity
rather than the bad food. 

For what it is worth, there are two great challenges I have encountered in
preparing feasts.  The first is to be called upon, without warning or
preparation, to take over a kitchen and produce a feast for X hundred people
with the supplies in the kitchen and no menu or recipes.  It is pure
improvision and an absolute nightmare, but a fabulous test of ability.  The
second great challenge is to establish a set of culinary parameters, then,
within those parameters, prepare a perfect, historically accurate feast,
which includes satisfying the feasters.  I'm still working on the second
challenge, but each successive feast comes a little closer.

Bear

> Thank you for acknowledging the complexities of the discussion.  *Just* to
> clarify my own position, this is not my stance at all.  My stance could
> more clearly be stated as thus:  that the needs of the *whole* populace
> superceed the needs of the individual *and* also that the culinary needs
> of
> the populace, *for me*, supercede any desire to be letter perfect in my
> recreation.  In analogy, I feel that the "spirit of the law" is more
> important than the "letter of the law".  Therefore I feel that it is more
> important to do what is necessary on site to have a *good feast* rather
> than being slavishly bound to a planned process if circumstances require
> adaption.  While the cook may benefit from this, both in ego and in
> reputation, my motivation is more to please the populace as a whole than
> for any self serving purpose.  I'm sorry that was unclear.
> 
> I remain, in service to Meridies,
> Lady Celia des L'archier
> 
> 
> 
>