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callistotoniI've been thinking about posting these thoughts for a while now. Since the muse is not with me this afternoon for work stuff, but the muse is with me for this, I'll go ahead and write and get it out of my system (even though I don't have the book to hand).
First, an overview of the book itself:
Brears organizes his book primarily around functions, specifically the functions/tasks required to feed a large English household in the Middle Ages. Much of his information comes from the 14th and (especially) 15th C., although he reaches back to the 13th C and ahead to the early 16th C when he judges it useful to do so. Since each of these functions requires an infrastructure, a lot of the book is about archtecture and/or how castles were designed to facilitate the food/cooking/management process. Functions include management (accounting, procurement, distribution and the like), fuel provision (wood, charcol), brewing, bread making/baking, dairy products, drink storage, cooking (including the special requirments for boiling and roasting), the storage of linens et al, and the serving of the food. Besides the feeding of the general household Brears also talks about serving the Lord in his privy chambers and some discriptions of cooking and dining in more middle class and peasant households.
For each type of cooking Brears also provides redacted recipies. There are recipes for boiled dishes, pottages (i.e. anything cooked in a pot), "leaches" (sp?), which are things you can slice like pates), baked dishes like pies, bread, and brewed drinks like ale.
Brears ends with an in-depth description (complete with cartoon!) of how a 15th C feast would be served, including who would do what.
Personal musings:
- Some issues I had with the book
I read this thing cover to cover, and I found it something of a slog. I had a hard part not glazing over the architectural detail, although I did appreciate his main point that Medieval folks were smart about how they set up thier rooms and processes, given their circumstances. Apparently this latter point has not been understood by many archeologists and historians. I would be hard pressed to recommend reading this unless they wer very interested in the subject.
Brears tends to mix and match his sources. When I went back and checked he would use early 16th C sources in a paragraph where he had been discussing 14-15th C stuff, so the reader has to be on their toes about when exactly his evidence comes from. Not to say that his overall picture is wrong, mind you. It's just good to keep one's timelines straight.
I was also unclear as to how nobles (those meriting seating with the Lord, or even high-ranking people in the Hall) would be served. Brears is clear about the Lord himself, but not so clear on if anyone else would get the level of service the Lord gets. For example, Brears sites a feast where the noble ladies had thier own room to be served in. Would they have thier own servers? And where's the break between Gets Servers and Just Gets His/Her Messes served?
- "It's all about me" thoughts ;-)
My motivation for reading this book was to see what I could learn about 14th C cooking and dining and to see what, if anything, I could incoroperate into my SCA game. I was coming at it from the persona perspective of a Duke and his privy-chamber eating meals.
One possible thing to incorporate would be the time of meals. Dinner was at (about) 10:00 AM, and supper was at about 4:00 PM. Ten AM would be tough at SCA events, given the usual schedual and people's commitments. But it would be a big meal that could get you through the rest of the day. Four in the afternoon is more do-able, although things are usually still going on by that time in the afternoon.
A second possible thing is the concept of "messes". According to Brears, people sat with a group of four, similarly-ranked people. Dishes were served on a platter and, if the dish was more liquid than not (e.g. pottages) people eat directly off the platter. Trenchers (approx. 8 x 7 in?, mostly bread but some metal) would be available for each diner and these would serve more as 'staging areas' for food, rather than used exactly the way we use plates today.
In theory,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nightbocce and her husband and J/S and I have talked about eating together at events. She's a duchess and J/S is a Duke, so they match, and Guillume and I can go along for the ride as spouse. ;-) So the mess idea could work. It would cut down on dishes, probably. :-) We still suffer from the annoying lack of minions, though, so servers are right out. ;-)
A third idea that many of y'all already know about is the concept of pastry shells as period paper plates. I find it interesting that this use flour was considered cheaper than the cost of the fuel and manppower that it would take to wash dishes. If I could figure out a way to bake stuff in pies in advance in such a way that the crust would stay strong (not mushy) than this might be another way to be both more period and to cut down on dishwashing.
Another thing that this book was good for was to give me context for the recipies that I see. Boiling meat, for example, makes A Lot More Sense to me now that I understand that a lot of the meat they would be using was heavily salted to preserve it. So of course you'd want to boil it to get that salt out!
I had known about meatless Fridays and Lent dietary restrictions, but I had not previously appreciated how much religious observations drove food. It wasn't just Fridays that were meat and dairy free, but Wednesdays and Saturdays as well. Add to that that, in England, getting fresh fish was often a luxury item and therefore was prestigious to serve.
These meat/dairy restrictions and the popularity of fish makes my life difficult in the SCA if I want to offer more period appropriate food. I have weird mouth chemisty, so I cannot stand the taste of fish of any sort (rare exceptions being for scallops and very rarely, very fresh shimp and prawns). And I'm super sensitive to the sulfer taste of egg yolks, so I gag on the smell and taste of cooked eggs. I'm fine with eggs in stuff, as long as they are well mixed in. So I can't eat anything with hardboiled eggs in it, or any sort of scambled eggs, or anything like that. Unfortunately there are a bunch of egg dishes in period cooking. When you cut out fish and eggs the non-meat day offering get very slim indeed. Oh, and did I mention that I'm gluten intolerent, so my system doesn't like me eating bread? I would be so screwed in the Middle Ages. :-(
This is an issue I'm still thinking about. I was wondering if I could have "fish" that was really chicken, just cooked with a period fish recipe (this would work best with sauces, I'm guessing). Gianetta has suggested that I just stick with vegitarian recipes.
And if one followed the rule, we'd be eating vegitarian and fish dishes at SCA events, soley, because those dinners fall on Friday and Saturday nights. This, obviously, is another instance where it would be difficult and impractical for me and mine to be period in our food at events, given that J/S doesn't like fish either.
And, of course, there's the obvious difference between providing food when you have the in-place infrustucture of a castle or a large estate versus trying to follow period practices when it's just you and your tent and whatever cooking setup you can haul and work with. The cooks playdates that we've seen have been fantastic! But my impression is that when you go that route you're tied to cooking and tending the fire all day and aren't going to do much else for that event.
It's all picking and choosing, and sometimes it's per event. I love thinking about this stuff, though. Hopefully my period cooking and serving skills will grow.
Overall, I'm glad I read it. I learned stuff, and I think it gave me interesting things to think about and try.
First, an overview of the book itself:
Brears organizes his book primarily around functions, specifically the functions/tasks required to feed a large English household in the Middle Ages. Much of his information comes from the 14th and (especially) 15th C., although he reaches back to the 13th C and ahead to the early 16th C when he judges it useful to do so. Since each of these functions requires an infrastructure, a lot of the book is about archtecture and/or how castles were designed to facilitate the food/cooking/management process. Functions include management (accounting, procurement, distribution and the like), fuel provision (wood, charcol), brewing, bread making/baking, dairy products, drink storage, cooking (including the special requirments for boiling and roasting), the storage of linens et al, and the serving of the food. Besides the feeding of the general household Brears also talks about serving the Lord in his privy chambers and some discriptions of cooking and dining in more middle class and peasant households.
For each type of cooking Brears also provides redacted recipies. There are recipes for boiled dishes, pottages (i.e. anything cooked in a pot), "leaches" (sp?), which are things you can slice like pates), baked dishes like pies, bread, and brewed drinks like ale.
Brears ends with an in-depth description (complete with cartoon!) of how a 15th C feast would be served, including who would do what.
Personal musings:
- Some issues I had with the book
I read this thing cover to cover, and I found it something of a slog. I had a hard part not glazing over the architectural detail, although I did appreciate his main point that Medieval folks were smart about how they set up thier rooms and processes, given their circumstances. Apparently this latter point has not been understood by many archeologists and historians. I would be hard pressed to recommend reading this unless they wer very interested in the subject.
Brears tends to mix and match his sources. When I went back and checked he would use early 16th C sources in a paragraph where he had been discussing 14-15th C stuff, so the reader has to be on their toes about when exactly his evidence comes from. Not to say that his overall picture is wrong, mind you. It's just good to keep one's timelines straight.
I was also unclear as to how nobles (those meriting seating with the Lord, or even high-ranking people in the Hall) would be served. Brears is clear about the Lord himself, but not so clear on if anyone else would get the level of service the Lord gets. For example, Brears sites a feast where the noble ladies had thier own room to be served in. Would they have thier own servers? And where's the break between Gets Servers and Just Gets His/Her Messes served?
- "It's all about me" thoughts ;-)
My motivation for reading this book was to see what I could learn about 14th C cooking and dining and to see what, if anything, I could incoroperate into my SCA game. I was coming at it from the persona perspective of a Duke and his privy-chamber eating meals.
One possible thing to incorporate would be the time of meals. Dinner was at (about) 10:00 AM, and supper was at about 4:00 PM. Ten AM would be tough at SCA events, given the usual schedual and people's commitments. But it would be a big meal that could get you through the rest of the day. Four in the afternoon is more do-able, although things are usually still going on by that time in the afternoon.
A second possible thing is the concept of "messes". According to Brears, people sat with a group of four, similarly-ranked people. Dishes were served on a platter and, if the dish was more liquid than not (e.g. pottages) people eat directly off the platter. Trenchers (approx. 8 x 7 in?, mostly bread but some metal) would be available for each diner and these would serve more as 'staging areas' for food, rather than used exactly the way we use plates today.
In theory,
nightbocce and her husband and J/S and I have talked about eating together at events. She's a duchess and J/S is a Duke, so they match, and Guillume and I can go along for the ride as spouse. ;-) So the mess idea could work. It would cut down on dishes, probably. :-) We still suffer from the annoying lack of minions, though, so servers are right out. ;-) A third idea that many of y'all already know about is the concept of pastry shells as period paper plates. I find it interesting that this use flour was considered cheaper than the cost of the fuel and manppower that it would take to wash dishes. If I could figure out a way to bake stuff in pies in advance in such a way that the crust would stay strong (not mushy) than this might be another way to be both more period and to cut down on dishwashing.
Another thing that this book was good for was to give me context for the recipies that I see. Boiling meat, for example, makes A Lot More Sense to me now that I understand that a lot of the meat they would be using was heavily salted to preserve it. So of course you'd want to boil it to get that salt out!
I had known about meatless Fridays and Lent dietary restrictions, but I had not previously appreciated how much religious observations drove food. It wasn't just Fridays that were meat and dairy free, but Wednesdays and Saturdays as well. Add to that that, in England, getting fresh fish was often a luxury item and therefore was prestigious to serve.
These meat/dairy restrictions and the popularity of fish makes my life difficult in the SCA if I want to offer more period appropriate food. I have weird mouth chemisty, so I cannot stand the taste of fish of any sort (rare exceptions being for scallops and very rarely, very fresh shimp and prawns). And I'm super sensitive to the sulfer taste of egg yolks, so I gag on the smell and taste of cooked eggs. I'm fine with eggs in stuff, as long as they are well mixed in. So I can't eat anything with hardboiled eggs in it, or any sort of scambled eggs, or anything like that. Unfortunately there are a bunch of egg dishes in period cooking. When you cut out fish and eggs the non-meat day offering get very slim indeed. Oh, and did I mention that I'm gluten intolerent, so my system doesn't like me eating bread? I would be so screwed in the Middle Ages. :-(
This is an issue I'm still thinking about. I was wondering if I could have "fish" that was really chicken, just cooked with a period fish recipe (this would work best with sauces, I'm guessing). Gianetta has suggested that I just stick with vegitarian recipes.
And if one followed the rule, we'd be eating vegitarian and fish dishes at SCA events, soley, because those dinners fall on Friday and Saturday nights. This, obviously, is another instance where it would be difficult and impractical for me and mine to be period in our food at events, given that J/S doesn't like fish either.
And, of course, there's the obvious difference between providing food when you have the in-place infrustucture of a castle or a large estate versus trying to follow period practices when it's just you and your tent and whatever cooking setup you can haul and work with. The cooks playdates that we've seen have been fantastic! But my impression is that when you go that route you're tied to cooking and tending the fire all day and aren't going to do much else for that event.
It's all picking and choosing, and sometimes it's per event. I love thinking about this stuff, though. Hopefully my period cooking and serving skills will grow.
Overall, I'm glad I read it. I learned stuff, and I think it gave me interesting things to think about and try.
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no subject
Date: 2010-07-13 01:45 am (UTC)2) Fish was very common in Scotland thruout SCA period, I'm finding, which sucks bec. I am not a fan (I *can* eat it & will if I don't have a choice, but it's not my fave, so I won't cook it myself). Fish shows up in great quantities in all the household accounts I'm reading, bleh. Further, my persona is supposed to be observant Catholic, so, uh, I'm also screwed on lenten eating! So I'd love to discover some more period vegetarian non-fish dishes too...
no subject
Date: 2010-07-13 06:28 am (UTC)2) I'll keep you posted on the recipes. Tonight I got 2 suggestions. Alys thought we should just consider it to be meat days and not Fri or Sat. Gianetta pointed out that dispensatons could be had, esp. For Dukes. :-)
Still, I'll be trying some veggie dishes.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-13 03:54 pm (UTC)And I like veggie dishes in general, good for you & they keep well.
no subject
Date: 2010-07-13 04:54 am (UTC)You could always convert them...
Date: 2010-07-13 05:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-18 09:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-19 05:12 pm (UTC)