[Sca-cooks] Question about illusion food, menus, ingredient lists and surprises...

[Huette von Ahrens]

Many years ago, when I did a Viking banquet, Selene asked jokingly if I was going
to serve lutefisk. I joked back and said yes.  Subsequently, I decided to add it as a 
joke to the last course of my banquet, the fish course.  Knowing the ick factor of lutefisk,
I decided not to make real lutefisk, but instead served white almond jello molded in fish
molds.  On the menu, I just said lutefisk, but I told the servers what it really was, in
case anyone really needed to know.  There were a couple of people who later told me
that they were disappointed that it wasn't the real thing.  But it was priceless watching
HRM Ivan, thinking it was the real thing and pick at it and attempt to eat a small 
morsel.  When he discovered it wasn't the real thing and was almond jello, he ate his
entire portion and asked for more.  After the rest of the banqueters saw HRM scarf
it down, they started experimenting themselves...  Very little of it returned.

That was years ago, before anyone really thought about people's allergies.  If I were
to do such a thing now, I would just say "Lutefisk*" and below it put *If you must know,
see last page.   Or some such thing and then give the real recipe.  This way you can
have your surprise and still inform those with dietary problems...

Huette
Caid

--- Irmgart <irmgart at gmail.com> wrote:

> So, I am planning a feast for the middle of June, and was thinking about
> doing a few "surprises" or illusion foods.
> 
> Basically, I'm planning a "bait and switch."
> 
> This is what I want to do:
> "pears in wine sauce"= meatballs shaped like pears served in galentyne (or
> other red wine colored sauce)
> "hedgehogges"=marzipan hedgehogges
> 
> "Walnuts" that are some sort of upsidedown tart baked in walnut shaped tart
> pans.
> 
> So, I pride myself on people having *plenty* of notice about what's in
> things before feast so they can decide whether or not to eat them.
> 
> How do I do this so I don't give the surprise away to the general
> population?
> 
> Or do I just say what things are, and then have them show up oddly when
> served?
> 
> Help!
> 
> -Irmgart
> _______________________________________________
> Sca-cooks mailing list
> Sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
> http://www.ansteorra.org/mailman/listinfo/sca-cooks
> 


Remember that while money talks, chocolate sings.

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com