[Sca-cooks] Need input for feast bid

[Bronwynmgn at aol.com]

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Greetings!
I am preparing a bid for a 14th century English feast to be served at an
event at the end of June, 2002, and could use a bit of input.  The autocrat
has requested that all dishes be English or French, 14th century, and all
from the same source if possible.  I am trying to come up with a seasonal
feast from Forme of Cury and would like some input on dish choices or other
suggestions.  I'd be willing to use one or two dishes from a single French
cookbook of the same time period.  I'll list the dishes here with a brief
description based on my reading of the original, and may go into a bit of
detail on certain dishes in another post, since I think this one is going to
get long.  I have not yet ordered these into any sort of courses and would
like input on that as well.  Some dishes may be dropped.  I will have access
to a commercial stove with oven (I think), definitely one household gas oven,
and can use a charcoal or gas grill; a commercial stove with 6-8 burners and
a griddle top as well as a household gas stove with four burners, plenty of
fridge space and counter space. It is a one day event, maximum feast size 100
people, and I can get on site by 8 am.

Potential meat dishes (depends to some extent on whether pine nuts are nuts
from an allergy standpoint, since the three dishes I chose originally all
have either almond milk or pine nuts in them.)
3 original choices:
  Bukkenade - a stew of either hen, rabbit, veal, or other flesh (I'd like to
use veal) with almond milk, currants, sugar, ginger, onions, salt, and "herbs
ystewed in grees", thickened with rice flour and colored with saffron.
   Mawmenee - "greek wine", sugar, cinnamon, pine nuts and dates fried a
little in grease or oil, cloves, ginger, saunders, and salt, with with
shredded capon or pheasant (probably capon if not too expensive, or chicken).
    Fonnell - almond milk made with broth, a lamb or kid partially roasted
and then cut into gobbets and finsihed in the milk, with small birds, sugar,
cinnamon, and salt, flurished with hardboiled egg yolks cut in two dusted
with cinnamon and with fried dissolved alkanet dropped on with a feather.

Other meat dishes which mady be substituted:
   Beef with Lombard mustard
   Roast veal with Pevorat - the sauce is bread fried in grease, drawn up
with  broth and vinegar, with salt and pepper, bioled over the fire.
    Fylett in Galyntyne - pork, roasted and then sliced, into a sauce of
bread crumbs, broth,  onions, pepper, saunders, parsley, hyssop, red wine or
white grease and raisins.

Other dishes:
   Loseyns
   Salat
   Aquapatys - whole garlic cloves boiled with oil, saffron, salt, and powder
fort
   Chiches - beans cooked with oil, garlic, saffron, powder fort, and salt
   Rapey - figs and raisins scalded in wine, ground, and strained, pepper,
"other good powders", rice flour and saunders, salt.  This seems to me to
come out like a thick fruit compote or relish.
   Spinach yfryed - boiled and then fried in oil, and seasoned with "powders".
    Rysshews of Fruyt - figs and raisins washed in wine, ground with apples
and pears,  "good powders" and "whole spices", formed into balls and fried in
oil.

I had wanted to use peas, since they would be in season, but all the pea
recipes in FoC contain the same spices, sugar, saffron,a nd salt, which
appear in many of the other dishes I wanted to do.  Before looking at the
recipes, I had wanted to use strawberries, which are in season then, but
there are no strawberry recipes.  I could do something from Ancient Cookery
(1381) and put in Chireseye, which I've always done as a thick pudding of
ground cherries, butter or grease, bread crumbs, and sugar ans spices, to
replace the Rysshews of Fruyt since they have apples and pears which are not
seasonal.  I had also considered doing cryspes, but that might be tough to
get them out hot...

Brangwayna Morgan