[Sca-cooks] Where does the "remove" error come from?

[Johnna Holloway]

It's always interesting to re-research such things. (And I know that  
Countess Alys has her famous article on the topic.)

OED online tonight says
b. Cookery. A dish that is served during a course in place of one that  
is removed. Formerly also: the action or an act of removing such a  
dish or dishes at a meal (obs.). Now chiefly hist.
   In later use, esp. in the contexts of French cookery.

1625 S. PURCHAS Pilgrimes IV. 345
The dishes so placed..that they did reach a yard high as we sate, and  
yet each dish fit to bee dealt upon without remoove.

That of course would have made it slip in under that once upon a time  
1650 cut-off date. Did someone come across this phrase and use remove  
as to make our SCA feasts different

[This quotation is not mentioned in Countess Alys' article.]

Or maybe it came from Larousse

1961 N. FROUD et al. tr. P. Montagné Larousse Gastronomique 805/2

Remove. Relevé Dish which in French service relieves (in the sense  
that one sentry relieves another) the soup or the fish.
---
Course

  30. A row, range, or layer.    a. A layer, stratum. Obs. exc. as in  
b, c.

c1430 Two Cookery-bks. 49 Ley e iiij. course of in Fleyssche..as brode  
as in cake.
1523 FITZHERB. Husb. §131 Set the nethermoste course vpon the endes,  
and the seconde course flat vppon the syde.
1553 BRENDE Q. Curtius Fviij, Over those a newe course of trees and  
stones agayne.

26. Each of the successive parts or divisions of a meal, whether  
consisting of a single dish, or of a set of dishes placed upon the  
table at once.

c1325 Coer de L. 3429 Fro kechene come the fyrste cours, With pypes,  
and trumpes, and tabours.
c1386 CHAUCER Sqr.'s T. 58 It nedeth nat for to deuyse At every cours  
the ordre of hire servyse.
c1477 CAXTON Jason 119 How many course and how many dishes at euery  
cours ther were seruid.
1599 MINSHEU Dial. Sp. & Eng. (1623) 6 Bring us some Olives for the  
third course.

As to the common usage in the SCA and where remove came from, I  
suspect the answer lies in one of those 'historical' cookery books  
that were available in the late 1960's. Mead mentions that servers  
removed dishes. Maybe it came from that. Or maybe someone copied a  
fancy banquet menu that used the term remove and it came to be the  
term that was used.

Johnnae


On Oct 11, 2010, at 4:00 PM, David Friedman wrote:

> I was recently in a Usenet exchange in which a U.K. reenactor  
> described a feast reenactment, set in 1500, as having fifteen  
> removes. It isn't yet clear whether the term was his or was from  
> whomever organized the reenactment, nor whether he meant fifteen  
> courses, which would be a second error.
>
> But that got me curious. Where did the idea that "remove" is the  
> period term for "course" originate? Was it in the SCA? In historical  
> novels read by people in the SCA? Somewhere else?
> -- 
> David Friedman