[Sca-cooks] amounts of food per person

Terry Decker t.d.decker at att.net
Wed Apr 6 12:29:57 PDT 2011


> Bear wrote:
> >When you are trying to serve 120+ (the smallest feast I've done was
> 80, >the largest over 400), trying to display carving skills in a timely
> >manner is a problem.  I can't find enough knowledgeable carvers.
>
> But keep in mind that there aren't (weren't) 120+ people at high table. 
> Those were the ones that the carver served.  The lower tables had dishes 
> that had already-cut-up meat.
>

Which is how I have handled the problem at all of my feasts.  The statement 
to which I was responding (as I understood it) was about carving at the 
tables as a display.  Unfortunately, I don't have enough people available to 
do this.

> This is one of those areas where, while we try to recreate a medieval 
> feast, we do it with a modern mind set and end up creating difficulties. A 
> whole chicken to the guests at head table?  Then everyone gets a whole 
> chicken.  Would it work to give the whole chicken, with carver, to the 
> head table and present platters of pre-carved or cut-up chicken to the 
> other tables?
>
> Even that would be part of our egalitarian mind-set.  From what I've read, 
> while something like that might have been served to the next set of tables 
> in precedence, the lowest would have gotten a dish that had bits of 
> chicken in it.
>
> From my perspective as a diner, I don't like to see whole anythings 
> plopped on the table - roast joints of beef or pork, chicken... It rarely 
> is then proportioned for the people for whom it is intended. And, as far 
> as disjointing a bird, the carcass is often all that's left for the last 
> person who is passed the platter.
>
> Alys K., perhaps too fussy nowadays

The last time I had whole chicken served to my table, I pointed out the 
problem to the cook (who is now our Baron).  He was attempting to present 
the chicken sitting on a nest with eggs.  It was an interesting 
presentation, but it would have been better done had the chicken been 
prepared for disjointing.

Carving in the kitchen cuts waste, so I'm all in favor.

Bear 





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