[Sca-cooks] Structure of an Elizabethan Feast?

[Joel Lord]

So far I'm working from The English Housewife as well, so that text 
looks awfully familiar :-)

Where did the 32 dishes/course thing come from?  We're looking at more 
courses than that, spread out over far more time, and setting the 
expectation that "fast" does not have anything to do with this day.  
Courses will have entertainments in between, buying me time. I don't 
remember at the moment 10 or 12 courses overall.  The one place where 
"fast' matters is that when a course needs to hit, it needs to hit.  But 
this is how we are selling the event from the outset, so hopefully it 
will go over.  Who knows if it will work as a concept.

We are going above/below the salt, above is limited to... 20? seats, 
below to 60?.  So I'm looking at a similar size to what you did, but 
currently at 3x as many dishes.  Also doing a couple dishes to feed the 
wait staff, but I can cook up a pot of stew in my sleep.

But from that it sounds like I'm insane, but going in the correct-ish 
direction.

On 4/22/2016 2:41 PM, Terry Decker wrote:
> 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 Lord