[Sca-cooks] Mudthaw menu

[Ruth Tannahill]

Originally, I was going to reply privately, but I thought the list might get
a kick out of seeing what we're going to serve for Mudthaw, our big baronial
event held in early March.

It's going to be an Anglo-Saxon feast. Not a lot of primary sources to draw
on, which is a bit of a bummer. I'd hoped to be able to access the Leechdoms
in the Old English Corpus, but I didn't get around to writing to Oxford in
time, so I'm using Ann Hagen's "A Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Food: Processing
and Consumption", Norfolk England: Anglo-Saxon Books 1992; Ann Hagen's "A
Second Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Food and Drink: Processing and Consumption",
Norfolk England: Anglo-Saxon Books 1995; Mary Savelli's "Tastes of
Anglo-Saxon England", Norfolk England: Anglo-Saxon Books 2002; Mark Grant's
translation of "Antimus: De obseruatione ciborum (On the Observance of
Foods)", Devon England: Prospect Books 1996 (my primary source).

Table course:
pickled herring, pickled onions
pea-based vegetable soup
bread
butter
garlic herb cheese

First course:
Roast pork with honey mustard sauce
Salmon with vinegar sauce
Barley and kale
Apple sauce

Second course:
Chicken or leek pies
Cabbage
Cheese
Bread
Butter
Honey butter (according to Hagen, the Leechdoms call for honey butter, so I
feel justified including it)

Dessert course (haven't decided if I'm going to offer this as a separate
course or send out the sweets with each course--need to do more research
there)
fruit compote
shortbread assortment
spiced cakes
walnuts and hazelnuts

The leek pies are a vegetarian option. I'm going to make up about 40
individual leek pies and ask the servers to ask the tables if they have any
vegetarians. If they do, the servers can pick up the appropriate number of
leek pies to bring to the table.

The fruit compote will probably be reconstituted dried pears and currants
(and maybe raisins).

I found a great recipe for honey shortbread using only unbleached flour,
butter and honey online by doing a dogpile search for "honey shortbread". It
tastes fabulous. I'm not including any cane sugar in the feast, so I wanted
a workable honey recipe. We tested it (under the guise of lembas) at a
recent Hobbit Holiday, and you can really taste the honey. I was going to
flavor some of them with lavender, others with cardamom, and leave some
plain.

My method for determining which foods to include or exclude are somewhat
arbitrary. If there is an Old English word for the foodstuff in question, I
figure they could have eaten it. Likewise, if a food is listed in Bede's
estate (the spices, especially), I do not rule it out.

Berelinde