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hrjI've posted my detailed technical post-mortem to the e-mail list for the feast crew, so this is more of an explanatory and descriptive post for a general audience.
Let me preface this by saying that pretty much everyone agrees that the label "Perfectly Period Feast" is a bit of a misnomer, but since it long since became a convenient handle for talking about the event, it shall be "PPF" in this description with no specific meaning implied thereby.
My involvement with the PPF can be considered to date to my 25th Laurel Anniversary party three years ago, which in many ways was one of the dry runs for the PPF. The basic concept is one that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ppfuf and her husband had been working on for some time: a medieval feast where as much attention was paid to the physical paraphernalia and the "performance" of the service as is typically paid to the food itself. Having experienced the concept as the nominal "host of the feast", my immediate reaction was "Anytime you want to do this again, I want in!"
So when plans started gelling to put on the PPF, I volunteered. And when the planned date ended up being scheduled in close proximity to A Certain Upcoming Milestone, I got a crazy idea and proposed that as part of my various celebrations of my 50th birthday, I wanted to underwrite the food expenses of the feast. (I didn't want a fuss made over that aspect, but it wasn't meant to be a secret either.)
The entire project has been, for me, a blast. There were the spoon-making workshops and the bench-making workshops and the pie-making workshop. There was the useful deadline for finally starting to make some new SCA clothes. (Minor digression: I LOVE my new clothes. It's nice to have something that FITS again.) When the time came to start assigning roles for the staff, I got asked to be the butler, so I'm going to describe the feast from that point of view. (A lot of this description is going to be old hat for those involved -- it's aimed more at my readership who don't know much of anything about this event.)
The feast was hypothetically set in England of the 1480s. There were about 40 guests, including the presiding royalty, and probably around 30 staff (although there were other people who worked on advance preparations, in addition). The tables were laid out in a U with diners seated only around the outer edge, just as you'll see in medieval artwork of the time. The table linens and utensils were all reproductions appropriate to the time, and the service of the meal was based on various medieval instruction books on the duties and techniques involved. And from here on in, I'll just give you my part, as butler.
After the guests have entered the hall and had their hands washed, we staff members do a ceremonial washing of our hands and are draped appropriately with a ceremonial towel whose arrangement indicates our rank and function. My towel is folded and draped over my left arm. Then I have a role in the ceremonial handwashing of the high table. Since my duties involve the tasting of liquids, I am required to taste the water that will be used for the washing in order to verify its purity. Then I hold the basin while the Yeoman of the Ewery pours water over the hands of each high-table diner in order of rank.
My next duty concerns the distribution of spoons to the high table (those for the ordinary tables are already placed, ready for distribution). Why is the butler in charge of spoons? Dunno. But when the Pantler goes up to lay the trenchers for the high table, I bring the spoons. And at the end of the meal, I collect the spoons again (and presumably count them).
After that, my duties all involve the serving of drink, up until the end of the feast. I was in charge of two stations: the main butler's station at the foot of the hall where we kept pitchers of all the drinks being served, as well as the glassware, and the spices that would be used to season the hypocras for the end of the feast; and a smaller butler's table near the high table that (in theory) held pitchers of drink reserved for the presiding royalty. (This distinction got muddied a little, as it became convenient for the high table servers to use the pitchers there for the entire high table, but I digress.) We were serving ale, wine, water, hydromel (a non-alcoholic spiced honey drink), by special request for her majesty a non-alcoholic wine-equivalent (cherry juice), and for the end of the feast, hypocras (spiced honeyed wine). And to assist me, I had an assistant (who I shared initially with the Yeoman of the Ewery and with the Pantler, but when the food service started I pretty much had him all to myself), and after some initial scrambling the kitchen sent a scullery boy out to me who took over the glassware washing (see below) and saved my butt thereby.
Since the idea was to have all the dishes and utensils be accurate for the period, we were working with the assumption that we would be providing everything (hence, for example, the workshops to cast dozens upon dozens of pewter spoons). For drinking utensils, this posed something of a problem. Ordinarily (if my memory is serving me correctly) you would expect that each pair of diners would share a glass (and possibly tht there would be separate glasses for the ale and wine???), but even with a group of people who have a fondness for collecting reproduction medieval drinking vessels, we didn't have enough to do that (and we couldn't guarantee that people wouldn't freak out about sharing glasses with their neighbors). So the compromise plan was send glasses out to the diners individually when they called for drink, then return them to the butler's station for washing (including a sanitizing solution) and reuse. This was an excellent theory, but ran into some logistical snags along the way. We'd finally had a day warm enough to call a real Spring day -- which caught folks by surprise and they came to the table thirsty and never quite caught up with their thirst. So especially when the drinks service first started, the servers were run off their feet taking glasses back and forth. And the guests took a while to get used to the notion that they had to request a drink. But that all goes in the "lessons learned" section.
The drinks service began after the first dish of food went out, and started with a ceremonial tasting of the ale before the royalty, after which they, and then the rest of the high table, were served as they desired. I was initially dreading the tasting duties since I've never bothered to learn to like beer, but this was a specially brewed sweetened spiced ale and I actually liked the stuff. (Hmm, must ask about maybe getting some more to try?) We went ahead and started serving the non-alcoholic drinks along with the ale at this point. Then after the first meat dish was served, the same tasting ritual was performed for the wine, after which wine was available for general consumption.
At this point, for the remainder of the main food service, my duties consisted of the following: make sure all the pitchers are kept filled, share with my assistant the duties of pouring drinks when the servers came with requests, pitch in on the glassware washing when the scullery boy needed a break, periodically visit the high table to verify that all was well and to do some personal drinks service, occasionally circulate among the ordinary guests to see that they were being served properly with drinks and to take special requests (and to participate in "stump the butler" questions about the proper use of beverages for good humoral balance).
Towards the end of the second course, I began mixing the hypocras at the main butler's station. I'd pre-ground a number of spices (cinnamon, ginger, grains of paradise, and pepper) and had both white and brown loaf sugar as well as honey for sweetening. The hypocras was prepared by placing the seasonings in a strainer bag and pouring wine through it (there was supposed to be a stand for hanging the bag over the wine pitcher, but it fell by the wayside at the last moment). After the initial mix, there was tasting and discussion between me and my assistant, additional seasoning, re-straining, more tasting, and so forth until the desired result was achieved. This involved grinding additional cinnamon and ginger there at the station, which I hope at least somebody noticed, since it made good theater.
I'm blanking on the precise order of the service at the end. I'm forgetting whether the service of the hypocras (and wafers) came next while everyone was still sitting, or came after the final handwashing. Well, anyway.
At the end of the feast, I and my assistant brought forth the last ceremonial glasses of ale and wine for the royalty, then there was a repeat of the high table handwashing. And then nothing was left but the clean-up.
And, of course, there was lots of other stuff going on -- for which you can hunt down other people's accounts. I have to say that I had an absolute blast participating in this project -- both the advance prep and the actual performance (and "performance" is probably the best description). I tend to have problems with being "in persona" in casual interactions, but having the structure of a job and a set of ritualized actions really helped transport me to another way of thinking and interacting. I'd love to continue working on similar events in the future to help optimize the details. (I also want to help write up the process and results so that other people can make use of this project for their own applications.) While this type of feast wouldn't work for all purposes and all personalities in the SCA, I'd be really happy to see it added to the regular inventory of event types, either in its complete form or in modular components.
Let me preface this by saying that pretty much everyone agrees that the label "Perfectly Period Feast" is a bit of a misnomer, but since it long since became a convenient handle for talking about the event, it shall be "PPF" in this description with no specific meaning implied thereby.
My involvement with the PPF can be considered to date to my 25th Laurel Anniversary party three years ago, which in many ways was one of the dry runs for the PPF. The basic concept is one that
ppfuf and her husband had been working on for some time: a medieval feast where as much attention was paid to the physical paraphernalia and the "performance" of the service as is typically paid to the food itself. Having experienced the concept as the nominal "host of the feast", my immediate reaction was "Anytime you want to do this again, I want in!"So when plans started gelling to put on the PPF, I volunteered. And when the planned date ended up being scheduled in close proximity to A Certain Upcoming Milestone, I got a crazy idea and proposed that as part of my various celebrations of my 50th birthday, I wanted to underwrite the food expenses of the feast. (I didn't want a fuss made over that aspect, but it wasn't meant to be a secret either.)
The entire project has been, for me, a blast. There were the spoon-making workshops and the bench-making workshops and the pie-making workshop. There was the useful deadline for finally starting to make some new SCA clothes. (Minor digression: I LOVE my new clothes. It's nice to have something that FITS again.) When the time came to start assigning roles for the staff, I got asked to be the butler, so I'm going to describe the feast from that point of view. (A lot of this description is going to be old hat for those involved -- it's aimed more at my readership who don't know much of anything about this event.)
The feast was hypothetically set in England of the 1480s. There were about 40 guests, including the presiding royalty, and probably around 30 staff (although there were other people who worked on advance preparations, in addition). The tables were laid out in a U with diners seated only around the outer edge, just as you'll see in medieval artwork of the time. The table linens and utensils were all reproductions appropriate to the time, and the service of the meal was based on various medieval instruction books on the duties and techniques involved. And from here on in, I'll just give you my part, as butler.
After the guests have entered the hall and had their hands washed, we staff members do a ceremonial washing of our hands and are draped appropriately with a ceremonial towel whose arrangement indicates our rank and function. My towel is folded and draped over my left arm. Then I have a role in the ceremonial handwashing of the high table. Since my duties involve the tasting of liquids, I am required to taste the water that will be used for the washing in order to verify its purity. Then I hold the basin while the Yeoman of the Ewery pours water over the hands of each high-table diner in order of rank.
My next duty concerns the distribution of spoons to the high table (those for the ordinary tables are already placed, ready for distribution). Why is the butler in charge of spoons? Dunno. But when the Pantler goes up to lay the trenchers for the high table, I bring the spoons. And at the end of the meal, I collect the spoons again (and presumably count them).
After that, my duties all involve the serving of drink, up until the end of the feast. I was in charge of two stations: the main butler's station at the foot of the hall where we kept pitchers of all the drinks being served, as well as the glassware, and the spices that would be used to season the hypocras for the end of the feast; and a smaller butler's table near the high table that (in theory) held pitchers of drink reserved for the presiding royalty. (This distinction got muddied a little, as it became convenient for the high table servers to use the pitchers there for the entire high table, but I digress.) We were serving ale, wine, water, hydromel (a non-alcoholic spiced honey drink), by special request for her majesty a non-alcoholic wine-equivalent (cherry juice), and for the end of the feast, hypocras (spiced honeyed wine). And to assist me, I had an assistant (who I shared initially with the Yeoman of the Ewery and with the Pantler, but when the food service started I pretty much had him all to myself), and after some initial scrambling the kitchen sent a scullery boy out to me who took over the glassware washing (see below) and saved my butt thereby.
Since the idea was to have all the dishes and utensils be accurate for the period, we were working with the assumption that we would be providing everything (hence, for example, the workshops to cast dozens upon dozens of pewter spoons). For drinking utensils, this posed something of a problem. Ordinarily (if my memory is serving me correctly) you would expect that each pair of diners would share a glass (and possibly tht there would be separate glasses for the ale and wine???), but even with a group of people who have a fondness for collecting reproduction medieval drinking vessels, we didn't have enough to do that (and we couldn't guarantee that people wouldn't freak out about sharing glasses with their neighbors). So the compromise plan was send glasses out to the diners individually when they called for drink, then return them to the butler's station for washing (including a sanitizing solution) and reuse. This was an excellent theory, but ran into some logistical snags along the way. We'd finally had a day warm enough to call a real Spring day -- which caught folks by surprise and they came to the table thirsty and never quite caught up with their thirst. So especially when the drinks service first started, the servers were run off their feet taking glasses back and forth. And the guests took a while to get used to the notion that they had to request a drink. But that all goes in the "lessons learned" section.
The drinks service began after the first dish of food went out, and started with a ceremonial tasting of the ale before the royalty, after which they, and then the rest of the high table, were served as they desired. I was initially dreading the tasting duties since I've never bothered to learn to like beer, but this was a specially brewed sweetened spiced ale and I actually liked the stuff. (Hmm, must ask about maybe getting some more to try?) We went ahead and started serving the non-alcoholic drinks along with the ale at this point. Then after the first meat dish was served, the same tasting ritual was performed for the wine, after which wine was available for general consumption.
At this point, for the remainder of the main food service, my duties consisted of the following: make sure all the pitchers are kept filled, share with my assistant the duties of pouring drinks when the servers came with requests, pitch in on the glassware washing when the scullery boy needed a break, periodically visit the high table to verify that all was well and to do some personal drinks service, occasionally circulate among the ordinary guests to see that they were being served properly with drinks and to take special requests (and to participate in "stump the butler" questions about the proper use of beverages for good humoral balance).
Towards the end of the second course, I began mixing the hypocras at the main butler's station. I'd pre-ground a number of spices (cinnamon, ginger, grains of paradise, and pepper) and had both white and brown loaf sugar as well as honey for sweetening. The hypocras was prepared by placing the seasonings in a strainer bag and pouring wine through it (there was supposed to be a stand for hanging the bag over the wine pitcher, but it fell by the wayside at the last moment). After the initial mix, there was tasting and discussion between me and my assistant, additional seasoning, re-straining, more tasting, and so forth until the desired result was achieved. This involved grinding additional cinnamon and ginger there at the station, which I hope at least somebody noticed, since it made good theater.
I'm blanking on the precise order of the service at the end. I'm forgetting whether the service of the hypocras (and wafers) came next while everyone was still sitting, or came after the final handwashing. Well, anyway.
At the end of the feast, I and my assistant brought forth the last ceremonial glasses of ale and wine for the royalty, then there was a repeat of the high table handwashing. And then nothing was left but the clean-up.
And, of course, there was lots of other stuff going on -- for which you can hunt down other people's accounts. I have to say that I had an absolute blast participating in this project -- both the advance prep and the actual performance (and "performance" is probably the best description). I tend to have problems with being "in persona" in casual interactions, but having the structure of a job and a set of ritualized actions really helped transport me to another way of thinking and interacting. I'd love to continue working on similar events in the future to help optimize the details. (I also want to help write up the process and results so that other people can make use of this project for their own applications.) While this type of feast wouldn't work for all purposes and all personalities in the SCA, I'd be really happy to see it added to the regular inventory of event types, either in its complete form or in modular components.
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 10:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-01 11:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-02 12:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-02 05:48 am (UTC)Wow. How ... high school. (It's probably just as well that I'm failing to visualize who your neighbors were.)
no subject
Date: 2008-05-02 01:41 am (UTC)Hmmm, perhaps something like this for my 59.5 birthday party...
no subject
Date: 2008-05-02 05:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-02 02:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-02 04:36 pm (UTC)now that I've actually read what you wrote....
Date: 2008-05-02 09:42 pm (UTC)response: The Butler is in charge of all the silver and keeps it in a locking chest/closet/something. If we'd had more shiny things (and a sideboard with shelves), you would have dressed the sideboard before the feast and undressed it afterwards.
Query: we couldn't guarantee that people wouldn't freak out about sharing glasses with their neighbor
response: That was exactly the reason. I survey'd the idea of glass sharing on my local group email list and it was a no-go. The germ-theory genie is out of the bottle and not going back in.
Query: getting some more [ale] to try?
response: I'll bring a 1/2 gallon to Mists Investiture. We've got half a keg left, I think.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-05 12:21 am (UTC)I was surprised to learn that glasses are carried away to be refilled, instead of the butler (or staff) bringing pitchers to the tables when a refill is needed.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-05 05:06 am (UTC)I certainly hope so -- I've pledged myself to helping on this end, although I think everyone needs some more recovery time before taking the next step (and we haven't entirely finished processing the post-mortem).
I was surprised to learn that glasses are carried away to be refilled, instead of the butler (or staff) bringing pitchers to the tables when a refill is needed.
This was primarily an intersection of the decision not to have people bring their own feast gear (since we couldn't very well require ownership of a 15th c. drinking vessel as a prerequisite for attending) and not having enough glasses among the admittedly staggering amount of 15th c. reproduction drinking vessels lent by the various feast staff. It wasn't an ideal solution, but unlike the spoons issue, making our own wasn't a practical option either.