[Sca-cooks] Re: Sca-cooks Digest, Vol 32, Issue 49

[Pat]

ISTR that servers in livery are either very late period, or out of period entirely.
  I agree about good theater, and I think we need more of it in our feasts.
  But huge chunks of meat carved at high table were not common.  Most of the recipes we have for meat tell us to start with a roast, then do things to it.

Honour Horne-Jaruk <jarukcomp at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
  Please consider roasting it whole. One of the things
we don't do that they almost always did was to have
lovely large hunks of meat carved on a table in the
middle of the hall, in front of the High table. (So
that the highest ranking people could say "That bit
right there"? Hmm...) It would be great theater, which
I consider very nearly equal to the flavor of the food
in making or breaking a feast. In fact, In my
experience, really good medieval ambiance, including
such things as servers in livery and pages with
washing-bowls, can replace expensive ingredients in a
feast with not one person the wiser. A few people
remember good flavors a year later. _Everybody_
remembers good theater.




Lady Anne du Bosc
known as Mordonna the Cook
Shire of Thorngill, Meridies
Mundanely, Pat Griffin of Millbrook, AL