[Sca-cooks] viking food and fall fruit

[Elaine Koogler]

Jadwiga Zajaczkowa / Jenne Heise wrote:

>Greetings!
>
>I'm going to be doing a dayboard the last weekend in October for an 
>event whose theme is Viking/Slavic. I'm going with the conjectural use 
>of period recipes method, in which I figure out what kind of foods 
>people would have been eating, then try to find a period recipe that 
>resembles it. 
>
>Here's my tentative menu:
>Beef or pork stew (egredouce)
>Millet cooked in broth
>Mushroom soup (funges with extra broth, vegetarian)
>Bread rolls with onions inside (or whatever God sends, as the Domostroi 
>says)
>Flatbread
>Soft cheese
>Farmer cheese
>Ham or sausage if I get it cheap
>Mustard 
>Carrot sticks (?) 
>Fall fruit: Pears, Apples
>Dried fruit ?
>By special request of the autocrat, I'll also be serving homemade 
>candied lemon peel even though it's not period for the time period...
>
>The most important question to me is, what kind of fall fruit can I use? 
>I don't think grapes would have been available. Apples & Pears, yes, and 
>maybe some dried summer fruits...
>
>I'm thinking about drinks, and I'd say maybe barley water as the closest 
>to small beer? Maybe a honey drink to resemble small mead?
>
>  
>
Why wouldn't grapes have been available? If nothing else, as an import. 
Certaily they were known in period. Is there any information about 
whether bilberries or other similar things were still available at the 
time you'd be doing this?

Kiri

-- 
Learning is a lifetime journey…growing older merely adds experience to 
knowledge and wisdom to curiosity.
					-- C.E. Lawrence