[Sca-cooks] period kitchens, staff position names
Stefan li Rous
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
Tue Oct 6 20:06:23 PDT 2009
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 ****
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