Introduction
Deciding on a Theme
Selecting Recipes
Costing
Costing Worksheet
Scheduling
The Precook Outline
The Day Of Timeline
Nice Touches
Bibliography
Calontir Cookery Guild

Kateryn de Develyn's Homepage

Deciding on a Theme

- country

English - There are period cookbooks out there covering the 13th through the 16th centuries. And a multitude of translations to modern English. See my bibliography for a link to Jaelle's annotated bibliography of what's available.

French - There are period cookbooks out there covering the 14th through the 16th centuries. And a multitude of translations to modern English. See my bibliography for a link to Jaelle's annotated bibliography of what's available.

German - There are period cookbooks out there covering the 14th through the 16th centuries. And a growing number of translations to modern English. Many of the translations only exist on the web as yet, and several works are in the process of being translated. Check the bibliography for a link to Jaelle's annotated bibliography of what's available. And watch Stephen Bloche's Florigeum and Cariodoc's Medieval Foods pages for links as translations make it to web.

Polish - there has now been published a new book on medieval Polish cuisine. look for it at your Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com, Borders, and public libraries.

Italian/Roman - There are several translations out there for Apicius, and a few late period and post period. I expect to see more becoming available in the next few years as interest grows in these areas.

Jewish Foods - there is more work being published by individual's in the SCA who are scouring the diaries as to what Jewish folk ate in period. I haven't found a substantial collection of recipes on the net yet. Nor have I heard of any to be published. Keep your eyes and ears open on this.

Middle-eastern - Best sources are available through Cariodoc's books and Medieval Foods web pages. Charles Perry is another good source.

Moorish/Spanish - Best sources are available through Cariodoc's books and Medieval Foods web pages. This area is just starting to be investigated heavily and we should see more translations to English becoming available within the next five years.

Celtic - Celtic crossed many cultures and centuries. No one food/recipe has been determined to be "celtic", you would do better to focus on country and century.

Ireland - no surviving cookbooks found. No real recipes. Documentation on what people ate in Ireland is extremely scanty and what there is - is well spread out among the different diaries.

Russian - no surviving cookbooks in period have been found. A household management book "The Domostoi" has a very few recipes. There are not enough recipes to develop a whole feast or to determine the "flavors" of the country.

Catalonian - there are several translation projects currently nearing completion, and we should be hearing about how to obtain copies of the translations or the see the books published sometime in the next year or two.

Viking - you need to decide which time period. There is some scholarship out there on early norse/viking cultures and some dig information. Much is not published yet, so you will have to look hard for it.

- century

We have quite a lot of leeway in determining what century to work in. The 14th, 15th and 16th centuries are best for finding documentation of recipes.

My recommendation is to combine a country with a century. 14th Century English, 16th Century German, etc. This helps to promote good scholarship on your part, and gives the feaster an opportunity to experience a meal in which all the dishes served could have been served together in period. You don't have to worry about serving an entire meal of dishes unfamiliar to the feaster. Many of the dishes in period are still familiar to us today. A cherry or apple tart, roasted meats with sauces on the side. Making the effort on your part to create a meal that could have existed can only add to the ambiance for the entire event.

- other:

Colors - we know through diaries and personal letters about feasts whose theme was done entirely in a color. Those colors are Yellow, Blue, Red and Green. Every food served would be a variation of the chosen color. Food dyes (some as we know now - were not so safe to eat) would be used on all the foods in order to present the feast. Thus, you would have your meats covered in a saffron-colored sauce, or endored with a saffron-colored coating. Looking at the table if this was a yellow feast - you would see meats, vegetables, pies, soups, pottages and breads all presenting a hue of yellow. It was a novelty then, and is a novelty now.

Non-fast day/fast day - We don't do enough of this in the SCA. We usually focus only on non-fast day feasts. There is some ongoing study of this fascinating part of medieval culture. I think you will see an explosion of articles on this part of the medieval daily life and diet being published in the next two to three years. I expect to see some great recipes coming out of this interest - which can only increase our respect and overall appreciation of the medieval cook.

Multi-country - This is an SCA thing. Feast of the Crusades - featuring a course or foods from every country or culture the Crusaders would travel through on their way to the Middle-East and back again. I haven't found much evidence that this occurred in medieval times. The Silk Road feasts, again foods served together from various cultures and too-often different time periods as well.

Multi-century - This is an SCA thing. Sometimes the attempt is made to keep all the foods to one country, using different centuries, but more often than not, it is merely a mish-mash of someone's favorite medieval foods from a variety of countries and centuries. While the foods are all tasty and well-liked, the feaster is not getting a true picture of the medieval feast. This is more like what I call the "SCA Feast" because the recipes came from medieval recipes/translations/redactions but no real attempt seems to be made on the cook's part to research as to country and/or century. Then there is the flip side which is that many of the cookbooks from period had authors who stole from previous publications. Thus, a 16th century cookbook literally would be the 14th century cookbook with a few additions or subtractions, and with new errors introduced during the transcription process. So, if you are trying for a late period feast and cannot find a late period source, but can find an earlier period source, you could probably get by.