[Sca-cooks] Affording a period feast

[David Friedman]

On 9/20/16 12:31 PM, Joel Lord wrote:
> I can't bulk out a period stew with potatoes, for example.
Are bread crumbs significantly more expensive than potatoes? Rice? Flour 
to make bread? Turnips? Those are all relatively inexpensive sources of 
bulk carbohydrates for period recipes.

HOWEVER, if the original intent of that statement was to talk about a 
real *period feast*, I will largely have to agree with it.

I think that depends on the scale of the feast--your examples are ones 
at a very high level. And the problem is more labor than ingredient 
cost. Chiquart is feeding several thousand people. If you had the labor 
to do a feast on that scale I don't think the number of dishes would be 
a big problem.

Going further, take a read through Chiquart again.  That's two menus for 
ONE FEAST, depending on whether it landed on a feast or fast day.

I think he assumes that some guests will be fasting even on a meat day, 
and have to be catered for.

" And as at such a feast there could be some very high, puissant, noble, 
venerable and honorable lords and ladies who do not eat meat, for these 
there must be fish, marine and fresh-water, fresh and salt, in such 
manner as one can get them."

Rumpolt, on the other hand, explicitly has alternative menus for fast 
day and meat day.

-- David Friedman www.daviddfriedman.com 
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/