Respected friends:
This article may be reprinted once by any local SCA not-for- profit publication, provided no editorial changes are made without my knowlege, both my SCA and legal names are included as author, and a complimentary copy is sent to me at: 2 Shadow Lane, Apt. #2, Peterborough, NH, 03458. All other rights reserved.
Your group is planning an event. You want it to be spectacular, of course; you want it to be memorable, naturally; and you don't want to bankrupt the group, either.
It has been done, it can be done, and with the help of these suggestions you can do it- for less than you ever imagined possible. All you need is a few extra books, a little more time, and a brief excursion into a medieval cook's mindset.
To begin:
Don't go near a cookbook yet. For a Rob Peter-Feed Paul Feast (From here on I'll just use the initials RPFPF) , you don't start with recipes, you start with seasons- of the year. My specific example applies to groups in North America, where I reside; in Lochac and Drachenvald adjustments will be necessary, though the basic principles don't change. (the name `RPFP' comes from re-using the `wastes' from one dish as ingredients for others. It's rather like designing an edible jigsaw puzzle. a detailed description follows the sample menu.)
If the date for the event hasn't been chosen yet, you have an immense advantage. Your group must have standing rib of beef or die? Your only hope is October/November, when the price of beef plummets to its annual low. You won't run the kitchen if you can't have fresh peas? Schedule for May/June, not January.
There are several reasons for this approach, the most obvious one being that foods, even in frozen form, are much cheaper during their natural growing season. But the more important reason is psychological.
We are building an illusion with our events- the illusion that we have slipped through a crack in time. Every tiny detail either adds to or subtracts from that illusion. You can't get everyone to wear museum-replica clothing- you can't even get the hall to cover the fluorescent lights- but you can make a vital contribution by what you cook and how you cook it.
Think like your ancestors. A medieval cook didn't have freezers, or controlled- atmosphere storage, or jet transport from the other side of the equator. He wasn't even trying to serve grapes in May, or fresh greens in February. You're trying to produce a feast he would recognize without going broke; use his wisdom to help you do it.
There are good books available which list the `in season'- and thus cheapest- months for a wide variety of foods. In the US and lower Canada, look in your local library for a copy of The Supermarket Handbook, which has an excellent guide. Failing that, many pre-1900 cookbooks contain the same information, especially if they were written for brides. If you are planning an event bid, use the list to choose the month that matches your group's favorite foods. If the date is already set, use the list to choose seasonal ingredients for at least 80% of the foods served. Make sure nothing on the list is impossible for the date by medieval standards - we've got the means to make egg custard for Christmas, but they did not.
This sounds boring and frustrating and depressing to a lot of my students. They complain that it limits their creativity, or makes them feel like skinflints, or both. But it's the way it really worked in the real middle ages; once you can accept that fact and work with it, you become exhilarated by the period `feel' it gives to even the feast-planning process. You are facing and meeting the same challenges they faced and met; you are forging an unbreakable link between their reality and your own.
I give you here two menus for the months of May/June, one a standard `fantasy feast' and one based on real, period food availability. The cost of ingredients for these two feasts is virtually identical!
FF RPFPF `day board' morning meal apples Strawberries and cream grapes sallet of greens cheddar cheese cottage cheese, cream cheese, Italian hard cheese boiled eggs lemonade and iced tea switchel, barley water, herbed honey drinks beef soup, mushroom soup Pea soup with and without shredded ham white bread whole wheat bread honey butter honey butter herbed butter Feast Feast Roast beef Beef stew baked chicken a minced dish using chicken breasts Roast pork, suckling pig, or ducks/geese carrots Asparagus, with butter-based sauce fresh peas with mint frozen peas with choice of mint, butter, or stock-based sauces wine and blackberry soup wine and apple/raisin soup bread wafers, with choice of cream or stewed apple- sauce Quiche Lorraine onion, broccoli, asparagus, and ham quiches a Warner made from fruitcake Warners made from : Sponge cake; Meringue; butter cookies; and homemade marzipan Noodles baked with cheese Noodles in a sauce of milk, cheese, new onions and vegetable stock bread bread bacon and spinach salad mixed greens salad with honey, walnut and bacon dressing roast lamb farm-bought weanling, or collops of, lamb strawberry-rhubarb pie Strawberry tarts, rhubarb tarts, custard tarts, and spiced sweet pastry Chicken pie green onion, radish, and spinach salad pork pie chive soup with grated carrot Leeks baked with butter & seethed yellow peas A warner made of baked chicken legs and broccoli florets, radishes, and other greens Chicken liver pate' A warner of Rose jelly Lemonade and iced tea orange-cinnamon drink, Persian mint drink, lime-ginger drink, strawberry water, rose water, almond milkIn case you hadn't noticed: there is a full extra course, and a total of 18 extra dishes and 5 extra drinks, in the RPFPF. (You would not want to serve the RPFPF dishes in the order listed, since each course would not have a suitable blend of textures and flavors if you did. They were listed in that order only to compare directly with the fantasy feast menu.) Yet I claimed that the RPFPF feast could be brought in on the same budget.
HOW?!?
Simply by thinking like a Medieval cook.
We, not to put to fine a point on it, are a bunch of compulsive wastrels. If we were working in a real medieval kitchen we'd be beaten on an almost hourly basis for this sin- and sin, in the sense of misuse of a gift, it certainly is.
Here is the obvious waste in the `fantasy feast' menu: Roast beef- bones, fat and scraps. Baked chicken- bones, fat, scraps, necks, giblets. roast lamb- bones, fat, scraps. Fresh peas- pods.
But there are two other forms of waste in the FF menu, that don't show at all to the modern person. One is wasted money; the FF version makes many poor choices for a May/June feast. The other, and the most important to me, is the wasted opportunity.
(Huh?)
The FF menu could be served to, and by, any modern person at any time of year. It would be a heavy meal, for a special occasion; but there's nothing in it to say `It's spring' except the peas and the strawberry- rhubarb pie, both of which are available frozen year-round. The RPFPF menu would empty the treasury if served in September, and require hocking the crown jewels in February; but in May/June, it's a powerful celebration of the bounty of the season, a powerful example of the effect of the season on the diets of our ancestors, and no more expensive than the FF version.
Start with the FF `day board'. Apples at their nadir of quality, grapes airlifted from the opposite hemisphere, beef out of season and at the highest cost of the year- an obvious waste of money, once you are paying attention to seasonal prices. Cheddar cheese, lemonade, iced tea and commercial white bread- wasted opportunity. None of these four existed in period (Cheddaring wasn't discovered until the late 1600s. Modern lemons, which make drinkable lemonade, are the result of 3 centuries of selective breding; their ancestors were fit only for flavoring. Tea wasn't drunk cold until sometime during, or perhaps after, the American Colonial period. Commercial white bread requires bleached wheat flour.) - and none of them inspire a feeling of past time.
The RPFPF version of the same meal substitutes seasonal strawberries and salad greens, for a cost reduction that allows added cream. Pea soup with ham pieces uses the scrape-the-barrel winter leftovers at a fraction of beef's price. Buy the medieval-sized `pullet' or `peewee' eggs, which are a market glut at this time, at almost scandalously low prices- and get more servings for the same weight of eggs as well. Whole wheat bread costs slightly more per loaf, but people take less and it's more filling. Seperating the honey and butter is a godsend to people trying to avoid fat, and recent evidence says the combination may not be as medieval as we used to think.
The Fantasy feast calls for beef, whole baking-sized chickens, a roasting-quality hunk of lamb, and blackberries- wasted money. It also uses carrots, quiche lorraine, fruitcake and strawberry-rhubarb pie- wasted opportunity.
Since I know many SCA people would gut and serve the cook if the feast had no beef, the RPFP feast includes it, but as stew which can be made from bargain cuts, and which has at least a marginal claim to historical accuracy. A cow which did not recover from calving would be eaten, in spite of her emaciated and hormone-flabby condition; but the result would certainly not be a set of lovely large roasts!
Spring chickens are delicious, but not very large. The big chickens that look good served whole are available cheaply only in late June- but that's no reason to do without. Buy the smaller whole chickens on sale and bone them out. Do something complicated and elegant with the white meat, something wierd and fun with the drumsticks, and you've still got enough parts left to make a total of four extra dishes- from the stuff left on the plate or in the trash when you serve them whole.
Lamb is THE classic spring food. But Supermarket lamb roast isn't cheap, even in the spring. With a little extra work, you may find a farm that sells weanling lambs- smaller, better price per-pound, and infinitely better tasting than the supermarket `lamb' (actually up to six months old, which used to be called- and still tastes like- `young mutton'). The farm weanling would cost the same as an equal weight of supermarket `lamb'. But if you're stuck with the latter, buy a cheaper cut for cooking in steam or broth as collops, or cutting up for a mixed dish.
Both pork and suckling pig are down in price (though both will be cheaper still during the fall slaughtering season) and popular. In some areas, duck and goose are at their yearly low and should be substituted. What you save by using less or cheaper beef, chicken and lamb will cover a hefty weight of either, and leave enough to fill out the veggie side of the meal impressively.
Eggs and dairy plummet in April/May and begin their climb back up in June. By watching the sales you can take advantage of the glut- all the butter-based pastries, cream soups and sauces, quiches and custards and flans and sponge cakes anyone could possibly eat. But use these basics as a beginning, not an end- don't content yourself with just one method of preparation. Use yolks in custard and quiche, whites in sponge cakes and meringue- twice the food from the same eggs.
Use the meat bones for soup stock, the fat to add some trace of proper flavor to the meat-pie crusts, the chicken giblets for a little pate' to enhance High Table or set out with the desserts for sweet-haters.
Even in season, there's so much waste in fresh peas that they're a budget-breaker; and shelling the fool things is worse than paying for them. Frozen peas plummet in price during fresh pea season, since they're less attractive to the buyers then, but there's nothing wrong with the quality. So: for every ten pounds of peas you need get ten pounds frozen and one pound fresh. Hull the fresh ones, boil the pods, then cook the frozen and fresh peas in the pod-broth. Noone will taste the difference and the savings will buy a lot of asparagus.
Use all the edible vegetable scraps in the quiches, and the hard, stringy, or otherwise unservable bits in the soup stock. You paid just as much for the asparagus bottoms as the tops; In a quiche their stronger flavor and less soft texture are an asset. The same applies to broccoli stems and green onion bulbs. Using ham in the quiche instead of bacon saves money, and uses up the good pieces frome the bone-and-scraps that went into the soup at lunch. Using bacon as a flavoring instead of the main ingredient in the salad means you can serve twice as much and still pay for walnuts and olive oil for the dressing.
Wafers do have to be made at home. (Borrow an Italian member's pizelle iron, or a scandinavian's or German's mandeln-maker. Better yet, talk them into doing it, since they have the experience.) They are thus more time-consuming by far than purchased bread. But even if the group has to buy the wafer irons, they're still cheaper than the equivalent servings of commercial bread, add more to the illusion, provide more variety, and are better for your group's reputation.
Wine soup was another rarity for spring, in the days when most wine was drunk `new' and aging was a chancy process. By using the stronger-flavored apples and raisins (which in the middle ages would be fit only for soup by June) you can get away with far cheaper wine and still produce a deliciously luxurious product. Not to mention all the flour and spices you can buy with what the out-of-season rasberries would have cost you.
Carrots, dried fruit for fruitcake, and enough cheese for noodles baked with cheese simply wouldn't be around in a medieval May or June. Substitute more seasonal foods and you've improved both the budget and the ambiance.
This system certainly isn't as easy as the usual pick-your-favorites- and-pay method. It demands more thought, more planning, more careful preparation. It means foregoing quiche in January and asparagus in October. But it pays benifits far out of proportion to the extra work it costs. Not only the obvious ones, such as more food for less money; not only the less obvious ones, such as less waste and a great reputation- though all of those are of value.
The biggest benefit is neither tasted or banked. RPFP feasts are more real. Your feast and feasters are drawn back into the rhythm of the land, the pattern of the year, the inevitable and inexorable march of seasons. That pervasive background of medieval life, lost to our air-conditioned and freeze-dried modern selves, returns to place everyone again in a world where time and tide and time-of-day are beyond our control. It works. It helps. It's possible.
Bon chance et bon apetit.-
Alizaunde, Demoiselle de Bregeuf, C.O.L. SCA
Friend Honour Horne-Jaruk, R.S.F.
Addendum:
Respected friend:
This is an addenda to my article on "rob peter to feed paul" feasts. it originally came from Highways, the magazine of the Good Sam club, but I've adapted it to our use.
January February March April May Keeper apples Keeper apples Keeper apples globe asparagus beef fish cabbage artichokes beef globe (france&south) broccoli broccoli artichokes asparagus broccoli chicken chicken beef broccoli cucumbers oranges oranges broccoli chicken (middle east) pork oysters chicken eggs eggs turnips scallops fish fish fish turnips lamb lamb weanling lamb oranges lemons lemons scallops pork, suckling peas turnips pig pork strawberries (France&south) June July August September October apricots apricots broadbeans broadbeans apples asparagus broadbeans beets beef broadbeans beef beets chicken beets beef (france&south) berries eggplant broccoli beets beets late cherries (middle east) cauliflower broccoli berries cucumbers fish chicken caulifower cherries fish grapes clams chestnuts cucumbers grapes lemons eggplant cranberries (spain) lemons melons fish parsnips eggs melons peaches grapes pears fish peaches pears peaches pork lemons peas plums pears scallops melons plums salmon plums turnips (middle East) salmon scallops peas plums (france&south) radishes salmon November December apples apples beef broccoli broccoli chicken cauliflower cranberries chestnuts "lamb" cranberries oranges fish oysters "lamb" pork (actually young turnips mutton) oranges oysters pears turnipsNote: while typing this out, I noticed that many foods SCA cooks would use aren't listed. Also, some foods that are may be late-period or limited distribution; I've noted a few of these, and welcome corrections and additions. Remember that this is a guide to when foods are usually cheapest; there is no way to predict wildcat sales!
Also, new world foods are specifically excluded, since I won't use them and thus don't care when they're cheap. The exception is cranberries, which are very closely related to european Ligonberries and can be substituted for them without ruining the effect.
Yrs in service-
Honour/Una/Alizaunde
Webbed by Gregory Blount of Isenfir (lindahl@pbm.com)