[Sca-cooks] Coarse for feasts

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Susan Lord Williams wrote:
> Concerning the order of the medieval feast, Ziryab came to the Hispano-Muslim court of 
> Cordoba, Spain from the Orient at the beginning of the 9th century. Prior to that and 
> after the Romans, the Visigoths, in Spain, served all dishes at the same time, sweet and 
> salty. Ziryab established or reestablish an order to the presentation of courses:
[SNIP]
> by introducing the three-course meal served on leathern tablecloths, insisting that meals should 
> be served in three separate courses consisting of soup, the main course, and dessert.
[SNIP]
> The question then would be did Hispnao-Muslim or Bagdad culinary customs or Knights, which 
> certainly catered to this order of courses, get to the scene of your banquet. 

Since the original poster was planning a feast based on ibn Sayyar al-Warraq's recipes from 9th and 10th century Baghdad, and not in al-Andalus, i would suggest serving based on the descriptions by the author/compiler, and not based on Ziryab, who had his own agenda from what i've read.

It's pretty clear from al-Warraq's writing that he envisioned a meal of several courses and not all dishes served at once. He also specifies different types of dishes in each course. For him the first course was cold dishes. I don't recall any soup recipes in his book - but it has ca. 615 recipes and i may have forgotten the soups.

> When I do banquets, I stick to the Ziryab style to give my kitchen help and waiters 
> breathers. All at once is almost impossible to serve all warm. 

When i do SCA feasts i have the meal divided into courses, each with multiple dishes, ideally based on the serving method of the culture that is the source of the recipes. Since we have servers to bring the dishes to each of 8 or more tables, it is easy to serve all the warm dishes warm to 60 or 150 or more people. If i were serving at home, i would reduce the number of dishes -- one feast i did had 26 dishes in 6 courses - i wouldn't do that at home -- but keep them organized by course, as did al-Warraq. Ziryab may have had something new to bring to al-Andalus, but his dinner service wasn't appreciably different from al-Warraq's.

Urtatim