[Sca-cooks] Structure of an Elizabethan Feast?

[Terry Decker]

I prepared an Elizabethan feast for the Outlands Kingdom A&S just this month 
and I used Markham's "Ordering of great feasts...." from The English 
Housewife for the basic structure.  That's 50 odd years later than what you 
are shooting for, but it likely represents the evolution of the feast during 
Elizabeth's reign as commodities like sugar became more available.   The 
general order  is (first course) salads (grand salad first, followed by 
green salads, boiled salads and smaller compound salad), fricassees (fried 
meats, mostly), roasts, hot baked meats, boiled meats and carbonadoes (the 
actual order may be mixed), (second course)lesser wild fowl, lesser domestic 
fowl, hot baked meats including fruit and vegetable pies and tarts, cold 
baked meats, and "mixed" dishes (quelquechoses).  Fish and shellfish and 
divided between the first and second course depending on what they are and 
how they are prepared.  The banquet of sweets would usually be the third 
course.  Individual portions placed before the trencher are also very much 
an Elizabethan "thang".

I can almost assure you, you are preparing far too few dishes, but we are 
constrained by kitchen size, limited trained staff and budgets.  A "full 
service," for example, consists of 32 dishes, the amount that can 
"conveniently stand on one table" served in a single messe (so 96 dishes for 
a three course meal, potentially).

You obviously want to produce a historical accurate feast, a noble endeavor. 
Unfortunately, most people attending will turn a blind eye to your view of 
the game.  They want good food, fast.  I try to produce feast as close to 
historically accurate as possible, but recognizing the limitations of the 
SCA feast, the pleasure of the diners and verisimilitude to the historical 
feast are the acceptable practical goal.  For an Elizabethan feast, several 
courses of well chosen and properly prepared dishes with each course served 
out together in smooth order, will likely serve you better than trying to 
reproduce the Elizabethan great feast without the resources.

In case you are wondering, the feast I prepared was for 72 people with much 
of the work being done before the event.  It was over-budget (Elizabethan is 
expensive), but we still turned a small profit.  The menu was:


Of the Course of Sallats

Compound sallat
Bread
Spiced butter


Of the Course of Roasts

Roast beef
Mustard
Garlic sauce
Peas
Sweet potato pie


Of the Course of Tarts and Pies

Chicken in paste
Orange sauce
Lemon sauce
Sweet spinach tart
Rice pudding


Of the Course of Sweets

Gingerbread
Banbury cakes


I'm still writing up the recipes and a description of how the feast was 
prepared.  One of the unique aspects was maintaining the historical recipes, 
but modifying them to meet a number of dietary issues among the diners.  The 
individualization of servings helped with this issue.  Preparing a feast 
that can be eaten by people with various dietary restrictions will likely 
end in a presentation at King's College or another teaching event.

Bear

So I'm heading up the feast for The Feast of St. Nicholas in Queen
Elizabeth's Court next December, and I'm finding one critical piece of
information awfully hard to track down.  How would the feast itself have
been constructed?  I can find all sorts of sources for what they were
eating, decorations, characteristics, all sorts of things.  But the
over-arching flow of the feast, not so much.

The day is intended to be a completely immersed day of celebration in
1560, which is to say food and entertainments.  My hangup is that I
can't figure out if I'm currently planning far too few dishes or far too
many, or if I'm trying to stick sallat in the wrong place...  I've spent
far more time digging in to either earlier England, or even moreso
elsewhere in Europe.

Any good sources anyone can recommend?

-- 
Joel of Vestfell mka Joel Lord
Barony of Concordia of the Snows, East Kingdom