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Kingdom Arts and Sciences 2018

Swearing in the competitors

This past weekend was Avacal’s Kingdom A&S Championship and The University of Avacal. It’s the first time the Championship has been done at its own event, and based on how many people I saw there, the event was a massive success. There were a ton of classes in 12 tracks, an A&S display area, and of course the Kingdom Arts & Sciences Championship.

Champion of Arts and Sciences

There were two full entrants for the Championship, Her Ladyship Niesa Abdelmessah, and myself. It’s a difficult and stressful competition, but at the end, I felt very accomplished just for getting through the creation, documentation, display, presentation, and questioning. HL Niessa had an amazing display, and entered bone carving and hide tanning and I am in awe of her skills in that area. I entered a research paper on the history of bacon, and a beef stew that could have been prepared on board a Tudor naval ship. At court that evening it was announced that I had won both the highest single entry and the championship, and I swore fealty to Their Royal Majesties Kvigr Ivarsson and Svava Suanhuita.

 

I never have a problem getting rid of the leftovers

Here are links to my documentation:

Pre 17th Century Bacon PDF: Pre-17c Bacon

Stew On Board Ship PDF: Stew on Ship

The rest of the post is fairly photo heavy.
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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Courses Vs. Removes 

This is an earlier version of an article I wrote which was published in Tournaments Illuminated Issue 202, Second Quarter 2017 p.35-36.

Serve It Forth, edited by Mistress Elaina de Sinistre, was a newsletter for those interested in culinary arts in the SCA, which ran until 2005.  In the April, 1996 issue, Dame Alys Katharine (Elise Fleming) first published “Of Course, It’s ‘Course’!” explaining that pre 1650 the word remove was not used to mean course in any English language culinary context.  The article since has been updated, and is available here. However, in the SCA, remove frequently continues to stand in for course, and so here is more information on the history of these terms.

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Early Tudor Rapier

I wrote this article for Tournaments Illuminated and it was recently published in Issue 200, Fourth Quarter 2016 p.15-19. Early Tudor Rapier: The teaching of the rapier in London before 1580 by the Masters of Defence examines the history of the rapier in Tudor England and how early it was accepted by the Read more…

By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Classical Roman Pasta?

Note: A later version of this was published in Petits Propos Culinaires Issue 108, May 2017 p74-76 “The Lack of Evidence Regarding the Existence of Classical Roman Pasta”.

In some of my previous work I mentioned that Roman legions had pasta. This is a bit of a contentious subject and the traditional story is that pasta came to Europe via China, the other tradition is that it was introduced to Sicily by the Arabs in the 9th century. We had a discussion of this on the SCA Cooks Facebook page and so I looked into whether or not there was proof of pasta existing in Classical Rome and Greece.

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

An Examination of Coffins

(Note Sep 6, 2016: I have done more research on various types of coffins and you can see it here)

22. 23.

As promised a month ago, here is my documentation for late 14th and late 16th century coffins.

Summary

An examination of pastry coffins from the ends of the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries.  I am making coffins from two cookery books, one from 1390 (Fourme of Curye) and one from 1597 (The The Second part of the good Hus-wiues Jewell).

My goal here is to compare and contrast the earliest and the latest coffin recipes I have found and to see if their similarities will allow me to assume that they function as a baseline from which to measure other coffin recipes.

Introduction

When I began this project it was because I had read in too many places[1] that there weren’t any coffin recipes in existence, while others say that there aren’t any from before the latter part of the sixteenth century.[2] I felt that as coffins are a key part of English cookery there had to be a few recipes somewhere.  I examined fifteen Middle English and Early Modern English cookery books from 1390 CE to 1597 CE and found references to coffins in eleven of them.  Of those eleven, six of them had actual recipes.  In total I found fourteen separate coffin recipes.

Although there are a number of general similarities they are exceptional for how often they are not followed.  Most of the coffin recipes seem to be prebaked, though there is the occasional exception[3], and some are baked half way, removed, filled and baked again.[4] Most of them seem to have lids, though there is the occasional recipe without a lid.[5] Many of them have the lid raised up by blowing into it.  Some have the lid prebaked and a hole cut in it so a gelling agent (like eggs) can be poured into it.[6] Some of the coffin recipes seem to be designed to be eaten, containing sugar or other flavorings,[7] [8] some would probably taste very bad and so do not seem to be designed to be eaten.[9] Most are baked, but some are fried.[10] They seem to be used for all sorts of menu items including desserts. The biggest similarities I could find were: a coffin is a pastry case designed to hold other food for baking or frying, it is often prebaked, it often has a lid.  The term “coffin” in this context means a chest, case or box,[11] so I suspect it has more to do with the shape than anything else.  Because of this I will use the term “coffin” to mean: a pastry case which has a bottom, sides and a top (with exceptions where referred to in the recipe) and that it will be at least partially prebaked so as to hold its shape.

For this entry I decided to compare the earliest and the latest coffin recipes; I will examine and redact the recipes from Fourme of Curye and The Second part of the good Hus-wiues Jewell and compare them.

More after the break:

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago

Salting Meat

15.

After the Lions Gate A&S Defenders competition I got a lot of questions about how to salt meat.  So I decided to put my research together into an article for the local newsletters.  So, here it is.

Salting Meat

The preservation of food has always been a major concern of civilization.  Modernly we tend to rely on refrigeration to preserve our foods. Cooling was also a method for food preservation in the middle ages, however, for obvious reasons there were limitations. Other methods needed to be devised to preserve foods, especially regarding meat. In this article I will be focusing on the medieval method of salting meats to preserve them for later consumption.  The methods I describe are those which would have been used in England and France in the late medieval period.

The salting of meat was a common practice in the middle ages.  This allowed for the preservation, storage, and transport of meat without refrigeration.  According to Food in Medieval England “it was a routine procedure on big estates for deer to be hunted according to season, when the meat was at its best, and the venison prepared and stored in larders till needed, and in this case heavier salting would be necessary” (Woolgar, Serjeantson and Waldron 181).  The salting of venison was common in great households, so much so that there were quite often men whose sole job was the preservation of food.  They would accompany the huntsmen so as to make sure that the deer were treated properly and would be preserved properly (Woolgar, Serjeantson and Waldron 181).

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By Tomas de Courcy, ago