[Sca-cooks] Medieval cooking for non-cooks

[Barbara Nostrand]

Noble Cousin!

Greetings from Solveig! Being both impoverished and poor at cooking is
a bad combination for the "Pot Luck" event. College students may also
have very limited cooking facilities. I am afraid that I am going to
seriously rant about this.

RANT.

Why oh why are you having a potluck in the first place? You are NOT doing
your college students any favors by constructing your event in this way
and you are NOT repeat NOT doing something which promotes recreation of
courtly culture of the Middle Ages and Renaisance. Are you seriously
proposing that the Emperor shows up to visit the Duke of Florence or some
such place and they send out invitations to the nobility to show up and
include in the note "by the way bring along a covered dish which serves
eight y'all" ?? Potlucks are a way for recreating church socials of
the twentieth century. They weren't even quite organizing things that
way in the mid 19th century. Read Tom Sawyer. Mark Twain describes a
"Box Social" from the period. Box Socials were a likely forerunner to
the potluck supper. Another likely forerunner is life-event celebrations
such as funerals of the poor where the guests each bring a food-present
to the host to relieve the burden on the host. Potluck Feasts do not even
do a good job at providing period or even periodoid food in many locations.
Basically, potlucks do not further recreation of the middle ages and
rennaisance either in a culinary sense or in a AEsthetic sense.

EXCEPTIONS

A cooking schola where cooking techniques, food history, and similar
food related matters can be an appropriate venue for this sort of
activity provided the food is part of a tasting activity associated
with the days events.

In the late sixteenth century, Toyotomi no Hideyoshi decreed a nationwide
tea gathering which all tea masters were required to attend and demonstrate
their tea style on pain of being barred from practicing tea. This affair
was set up in a large garden. Each tea master set up their own demonstration
area where they prepared and served tea along with the obligatory munchies
that get served along with it.

While there may be other appropriate venues for potluck-live activities,
I very much doubt that any of them correspond to a potluck supper with
the buffet line and all of that. As far as I can tell, potlucks themselves
are largely unknown outside of North America. Buffet lines should also be
absent from feasts. The closest thing to a buffet in period were the
side-boards served at dances. These usually contained various light
confections and were not viewed as a meal.

					Your Humble Servant
					Solveig Throndardottir
					Amateur Scholar


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+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Barbara Nostrand, Ph.D.         | Solveig Throndardottir, CoM       |
| deMoivre Institute              | Carolingia Statis Mentis Est      |
| mailto:nostrand at acm.org         | mailto:bnostran at lynx.neu.edu      |
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