[Sca-cooks] An SCA feast

[Christine Seelye-King]

In looking for something completely different in my Deleted File, I just saw
this note.  I feel a few points are in need of clarification about the
original feast, which occurred at the Crossroads of the Roses event held on
Sept 17th: 
Diana Wertz (Lady Sharra) was a guest at the feast, not the lady who cooked
it.  That lady was Lady Adaire from the Shire of Owl's Nest, and it was her
first feast.  Her peer is Mistress Temair Carr, who was at one time on this
list.  She was in the kitchen with her giving assistance.  I was called in
to handle a couple of trickier items (shaving fennel and prepping ducks for
the oven), and I noted that she was making a cardinal error, that of cooking
things for a feast for the first time without having cooked them previously.
When I made a gentle comment along those lines, Mistress Temair said: "I am
trying to let her figure this out without me saying too much, and letting
her make her own mistakes."  I said that was fair, I did what I was asked to
do, and I removed myself from the kitchen.  I could have stayed and 'made it
all better', but that was not what was called for, and so I left with a
rousing "Don't freak out! It will all work out just fine!" speech, and left
them to it.  (I didn't stay for dinner, although it looked wonderful, I
wanted to get home before dark, and before finding gas proved to be too
difficult.)  From all reports, the meal was very well-received. I have not
had a chance to talk to either Temair or Adaire to see what their
impressions were.  
So I know nothing about her documentation, although she had her Laurel by
her side, so I'm sure it was considered and discussed as part of the
planning process.  
Christianna  


-----Original Message-----
From: Sca-cooks
[mailto:sca-cooks-bounces+chefchristy=kingstaste.com at lists.ansteorra.org] On
Behalf Of Laureen Hart
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2016 2:41 PM
To: Cooks within the SCA
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] An SCA feast

Some of us are documentation fans, some are not.
The breaking point is where we fans say "There are no period recipes" and
the non-fans *Hear* "That isn't period".
We know they ate bread, stew, and numerous other things that we do not have
documentable recipes for.
For me, the problem is when someone refers to the undocumented bits as
"period".
(Or- If they had a Bic lighter, they would have used one.)

As Bear says, it is about verisimilitude. 
Most of us fans make the choice to use period ingredients and do the best we
can to fill in where there is no documentation.
We don't decide we can't serve bread at the feast because we don't have a
recipe.
We also don't decide that just because we don't have documentation we can
just whip up a Bisquick Dill Surprise.

In Madrone (An Tir) we have a Peasants festival every year. We serve a
hearty Soup/Stew.
Sure - we have little specific documentation for Peasant stew.
But (to me) it would be just as wrong to serve "Noble Person" food to our
Peasants as it would be to use russet potatoes.
Having a recipe for the wrong thing isn't necessarily better than having no
recipe.

As a documentation fan I don't understand why others don't care to produce
as close a period feast as they can.
I am sure a religious documentation fan probably doesn't understand why I
don't care how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
We all play the game in our own way. Tolerance is hard, especially when
someone is massacring something we work hard on, or care passionately about.

(Let's not even start with the "We don't want period food, we want edible
food" heathens.)

Randell Raye

-----Original Message-----
From: Sca-cooks
[mailto:sca-cooks-bounces+lhart=graycomputer.com at lists.ansteorra.org] On
Behalf Of Terry Decker
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2016 6:24 AM
To: Cooks within the SCA <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] An SCA feast

You are making the mistake of seeing an SCA feast as an exercise in
historical cooking.  It isn't.  It is an exercise in verisimilitude.  It's
meant to emulate medieval dining and help the attendees stay in the medieval
mood.  There are those of us who extend this by preparing historical
recipes, but we don't usually follow the religious restrictions that would
have been in place for our feasts.

There was a comment posted on this list about the preparation of historical
recipes that stressed the opposite side of this, speaking of rigid adherence
to the recipe which also ignores the feast as an exercise in verisimilitude.

It was, I believe, a complaint about my modifying recipes to meet various
dietary restrictions.  In my defense, I would point out that the period cook
had to produce pleasing dishes that met the health requirements of their
patrons, so my modifications are in keeping with both historical practice
and expanding the verisimilitude.

Bragg MacMorrichai is obviously ignorant of your predilection to ask
questions and provide advice.  Since a quick search doesn't provide anything
under that name, she appears to be new to the SCA.  Cut her some slack.  As
a culinary historian, maybe we can pick her brain.

Looking at the menu, I would suggest that you encourage Diana Wertz to think
about preparing actual period fare for her next feast.

Remember verisimilitude, if the feast isn't period, they aren't problems,
just rough places that need to be smoothed to make a more historically
correct offering.

As for your other questions, the menu is "perioid."  Without the recipes, it
is difficult to determine how close they come to historical recipes.  No
stuffed mushrooms that I can recall, but I would serve either mushroom tart
or Martino's mushroom recipe.  Very flakey pastry is possible, but a period
meat pie would generally use a hot water and rye coffin.  Assorted drinks is
how you deal with not being able to serve many of the period drinks.  The
assorted desserts is of interest to me, since it doesn't convey what they
are.

I'm not on Facebook, so if you want to re-post this over there feel free.

Now, back to 16th Century German.  I got a couple recipes to test.

Bear


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