[Sca-cooks] Ken Albala's talk

[Stefan li Rous]

Alys Katharine said:
<<< There is a one-hour lecture available online, "Playing the Scalco: 
Serving Meals Directly from Renaissance Banquet Literature". It was 
originally given at the Getty Center (CA) in January 2016. Here's the 
description: "Ken Albala, professor of history at the University of the 
Pacific and author of over 20 books on food, discusses the large body of 
cookbooks, banquet guides, and carving manuals of early modern Europe, 
while sharing his personal experience of organizing and serving meals 
from them. These books were clearly meant to be used by culinary 
professionals, but how good was their advice?" URL is 
http://www.getty.edu/research/exhibitions_events/events/art_of_food/index.html#albala 
I have not yet seen this video but thought it might be of interest to 
you all. >>>

I *highly* recommend SCA feast cooks listen to this video.
It talks a little bit about food, but more about how to serve a feast, both in period and in recreations. Many of the things he mentions will be recognizable to SCA feast cooks. From cooking in a wide variety of unusual environments to recommendations to cook as instructed in the period documents. Changing things is likely to cause problems.  He also talks about needing to be flexible and to be able to change things on the fly when something goes wrong. Because it will. Many, many things that we’ve discussed on this list over the years.

He also confirms that pasta did NOT come back from China with Marco Polo. He says Marco Polo said “they have pasta just like us”.  He talks about Ambergris. Hew talks about sugar in late period dishes and why they liked it.

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