[Sca-cooks] Soup at feasts

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On May 16, 2006, at 6:29 PM, K C Francis wrote:

> I love the soups served at feasts here in the West.  Just had the  
> most incredible broth (served from a pitcher to each diner).  A  
> cart with the big pot and ladle brought around the tables seems to  
> work fine and keeps the drips contained therein.

I've done this. How many people are we talking about serving? Gunthar  
has served upward of 500 at a time. I can see a potential for  
logistical problems. My rationale for not adding it to my menu was  
that I already had two stew-like meat-in-sauce dishes, which, to me,  
between them and the frumenty, was plenty of pottages. And given that  
medieval soups _are_ pottages, and not really soups as we know them  
(for the most part), and my limited number of burners and rather  
narrow time window for service, it seemed a much better idea not to  
add a soup.

>   A thick soup also reduces any slopping when passing the bowls  
> back.  I haven't encountered any problems and I don't see the  
> concern.  Have you seen some bad spills or something?  I think a  
> soup is a really good dish for a feast and miss it when there isn't  
> one.

Hey, I love a good soup. It's just that the role they play in a  
modern meal is either as a first course or as a lunch or "supper"  
dish (note the etymological connection), whereas in a medieval sense,  
they're just another pottage. Missing them when they're not there  
could conceivably be the result of having modern expectations for a  
medieval meal.

But then, I also didn't provide honey butter, and I'm sure people  
missed that, too ;-).

Adamantius

>
>
>> From: "Michael Gunter" <countgunthar at hotmail.com>
>> Reply-To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at ansteorra.org>
>> To: sca-cooks at ansteorra.org
>> Subject: [Sca-cooks] Soup at feasts
>> Date: Mon, 15 May 2006 11:23:44 -0500
>>
>>> one person  began to gripe [admittedly, mildly] about a lack of  
>>> soup on my menu.
>>>
>>> As it happens, I did not add a soup to the menu, but Mistress  
>>> Andrea  did add one to hers, for the dayboard. The gentle who had  
>>> requested  it proceeded to show up late and almost missed it.
>>>
>>> Adamantius
>>
>> I never served soup at my feasts, mainly because most of the time
>> my feasts fed several hundred people and the logistics of serving
>> soup never seemed to to warrant it when other dishes could be
>> done just as well. I've had soup but it always seemed rather  
>> hazardous.
>> Often a couple of people hauling around a large pot of hot liquid in
>> close quarters or something equally scary. There was one feast where
>> they went around with large pitchers and that seemed to work.
>>
>> Now if I were serving from a kitchen or directly from a cooking area
>> it's not so bad. And I remember Atenveldt's War Practice Soup kitchen
>> with particular fondness. The only time I can remember serving soup
>> at one of my feasts was when we did the open kitchen at our Black
>> Oak Keep championships and served out of a huge iron cauldron on
>> the fire. That was fun.
>>
>> I love soup though, I just shudder at figuring out how to serve it to
>> a large crowd.
>>
>> Gunthar
>>
>>
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"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
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Holt, 07/29/04