[Sca-cooks] Source information for the make-up of removes?

[david friedman]

>What I actually need help here with is trying to explain to a friend (a
>member of a Viking/dark ages group that does very little food research) why
>the idea of separate "soup/appertiser"; "main" and "dessert" courses is a
>modern invention.
>
>I'm trying to explain that a standard medieval remove would consist of a
>variety of dishes meant to bolster the eaters "humours"

1. "Remove" is a post-period term and didn't mean course. In English, 
"course" is a period term for a course.

2. While it is true that medieval medical theory put a heavy emphasis 
on diet, I don't think that explains a lot about the makeup of a 
course. For one thing, a feast would be served to lots of 
people--with different imbalances of humors and so different dietary 
needs based on medieval medical theory. It might explain something 
about what is served at the beginning and what at the end--but only 
for particular times and places. In particular, I would be surprised 
to find that viking age Norse practice was much influenced by such 
theories. For information on that, I would suggest either going to 
the sagas directly or to one of the web pages maintained by someone 
well informed about that culture, such as Thora Sharptooth.

3. You can find menus in quite a number of period sources--they will, 
of course, be different at different times and places. A number of 
them are webbed on or linked to my site at:

http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/Medieval.html

In particular:

_Le Menagier de Paris_ has menus for a bunch of (relatively simple) meals

_Du Fait de Cuisine_ is a description of an enormous feast lasting 
two days with two meals each day

_The Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook_ had a discussion of the order of service

_Two Fifteenth Century Cookery Books_ has a bunch of menus for big feasts

These come, of course, from a variety of different cultures and so 
don't all describe the same pattern of service.
-- 
David/Cariadoc
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/