[Sca-cooks] Serving meals in period

[RUTH EARLAND]

After checking a book whose title escapes me at the moment, but is about 
dietary practices of Tudor England, I see that the number of dishes per 
course were regulated according to station. For an ordinary meal, a great 
lord could have 5, while an ordinary knight would have 3. A "dish" would be 
defined as anything from one great fowl to several smaller birds or a 
corresponding amount of meat or fish. Vegetable or side dishes don't seem to 
count toward the total.

Also, keep in mind that sumptuary laws were pretty much universally flouted.

The point of this statement is not to imply that we should be serving 
multiple meat offerings with every course. If your budget allows it, it 
would be cool, but that's something a lot of groups simply cannot do. My 
arguement is that multiple dishes per course was one possible way of serving 
a feast.

Regarding multiple meat offerings per course, it can work, but it can also 
ruin your feast. I've been to too many feasts where the cook tried to do too 
much, offer too many different dishes, and over-extended his or her 
physical, financial, or psychological resources. Personally, I like to serve 
a fairly standard offering with each course. Not particularly inspired, but 
I don't get many complaints. There will be one meat, at least. If it's a 
controversial "meat" like pork, lamb or fish, I'll offer an alternative. 
Lately, I've been offering a vegetarian option on a side table, for the 
vegetarians to serve to themselves instead of the meat, and it's been very 
well received. I will also offer at least one fruit or vegetable side dish 
and some kind of a starch. I keep sauces on the side, in separate bowls, 
which is completely modern, but allows people with food allergies to choose 
to sauce or not.

The second point of this very long response is that dietary considerations 
play an important role in my feast planning. Yes, I would like to serve a 
completely period feast. But I understand that in order to encourage more 
people to stay for the feast I need to give them flexibility in choosing 
which foods they will or will not eat.

I don't subscribe to the Happy Meal mentality. I don't want to serve people 
purely modern food and say it's "period". But I don't want to cheat feasters 
or endanger their health by offering them nothing but a selection of foods 
they might not be able to eat.

Berelinde