[Sca-cooks] period kitchens, staff position names

[Stefan li Rous]

Sabra replied to me on Sunday with:

<<< When I say that I am a newbie in the Medieval kitchen, that is my
understatement of the SCA career! >>>

Well, very few of us have gotten the chance to work in real Medieval  
kitchen!

However, here is the report from someone who has:
Kentwell-Hall-art (25K)  6/25/98  A period kitchen at a Living History  
site.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FEASTS/Kentwell-Hall-art.html

<<< I am in the process of collecting recipes
and working on my first project- (a turkey recipe from Rumpolt) but I  
have
never worked a feast or even been a feast-o-crat! >>>

I suspect that many, the majority?, of the folks reading this list  
have never served as an SCA headcook. It may seem otherwise, simply  
because some of the most experienced cooks are also the most vocal. I  
seem to fall in the latter, but I have never been a headcook and  
probably never will.  I just don't have the experience. On the  
otherhand, at most pot lucks, both SCA and mundane, I will show up  
with period food and the recipe.  In a few weeks I will be doing the  
Nobles Lunch for our fall event.

So, there are lots of food things to do, from translating and  
redacting recipes, to research medieval cooking and kitchens, to  
working in the feast kitchen including washing dishes, without being  
the headcook.  Even if you want to be a headcook sometime, I would  
still recommend getting in as much time as you can working in other  
folks' kitchens. Most of being a headcook really has to do with people  
management and logistics and not with just knowing how to cook.

Over the years I have placed a number of message files and articles in  
the Florilegium which deal with managing the kitchen and less with  
actual cooking.

And yes, headcook, is one of the titles many of us have come to prefer  
instead of the made-up word, feast-o-crat.

A bit more on this:
kit-job-titls-msg (20K)  9/ 9/09  Medieval kitchen job titles.
http://www.florilegium.org/files/FEASTS/kit-job-titls-msg.html

This file actually deals more with period titles for various kitchen  
staff, rather than SCA kitchens.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****