Menu Planning
Menu planning for a feast is as much art as science. In fact it is far more art than science. Much of it
is a matter of aesthetics – what foods taste good together, complement one another or provide a
good counterbalance to one another. However there are some other important considerations, and
sometimes there is a lot of balancing between what you want and what is feasible.
This guide assumes that you will be using mostly period recipes, but hopefully much of it will still be
applicable in the case that you are not.
Beginnings
The first things to find out about a feast (or other event) you may have just agreed to cook for are
 any theme there might be
 budget
 approximate number of guests expected
 location and nature of the kitchen
Let’s talk about each of these in a little more detail.
Theme
A feast may come to you already equipped with a theme. Sometimes this is a geographic and/or
temporal theme – 15th century Italy for example. Sometimes it is a more general theme – Valentines
Day, or a hunt perhaps. The first are the easiest to deal with as you can simply go to the appropriate
sources to find appropriate recipes. The second kind of theme may require some more general
research. What were the customs associated with such occasions in period? Were there any specific
foods or culinary traditions? Note that these things may differ over time and place and so you may
need to make a decision about whether to focus on a specific time and place (and if so what), or
whether to mix things up.
A further difficulty arises if the time or place associated with your theme does not have a lot of
specific evidence about recipes and food. This requires a lot more research and a great deal of
supposition and might be best saved for when you have a bit more experience.
Of course if your feast has no theme then you also need to make decisions about whether you will
have your own private theme or whether you will mix and match things. If you have been recently
researching a particular style of food this could be a good opportunity to try it out. On the other
hand it may be more period than you think to mix up time periods and geographies. After all, even
in period the Italians had French cooks, and the French had Italian cooks (and everyone thought the
English were terrible cooks). And while cooking styles changed over time there were also doubtless
periods where those styles overlapped.
Budget and numbers
Knowing the budget and numbers will put some broad boundaries around the dishes you might
consider for your feast. Obviously there are some foodstuffs and ingredients that are more
expensive than others. If you are running a cheap feast these are likely to be out of the question.
Probably the biggest influence on budget is how many meat vs non-meat dishes you have as meat
tends to be more expensive than vegetables. However rare or out of season vegetables can also be
expensive.
Planning a large feast can also put some constraints on what you might consider making. Some
dishes are not well suited to make in large quantities. Some are just too fiddly or time consuming.
Others require equipment that is not available in large enough sizes. These things can, of course, be
remedied with sufficient investment of time, people and possibly money, but this may not be an
option for your feast.
Location and kitchen
Consideration of these factors will be more important later on, but at this stage you might like to
think about issues of transport and facilities. Is it going to be easy to get food (especially fresh food)
to your site? Is there a lot of refrigerator space? Freezer space? Is the stove large? The oven? You
may need to adjust your menu based on these factors, or you may need to begin a conversation
with your feast steward about the options for modifying them, for instance by borrowing or hiring a
barbecue or portable gas rings.
The shortlist
The shortlist is just that. Make a list of recipes. Think about the factors noted above when you
choose them, but mostly think about what will taste good and what would go into making a great
feast menu. Read through some period cookbooks and pick out the things that are screaming at you
to make them. Choose dishes that make you drool. Choose dishes your friends like. Choose dishes
that are baronial favourites, or not if you want to shake things up a bit. Find out if visiting royalty
have any favourites or preferences.
Some people propose a rule whereby you should not put any dish in a feast that you have not
cooked before. This is not a bad rule if you are quite inexperienced, but I don’t tend to follow it
much myself. This is because you may not have cooked exactly this dish before, but you may
nevertheless be confident that you know how to do it. There is, after all, only so many ways to make
a stew, or a pie. If there is something you would really like to make for the feast, but which you don’t
feel confident about cooking, try and get in some trial runs in the lead-up to the feast. This will not
only help in cooking the dish on the day, but also give you a better idea of the proportion of the
ingredients and how it might scale up to large numbers of servings.
There is another rule that some people have for feasts, and that is to allow people a certain amount
of protein (generally meat). I don’t hold with this rule much either. However it is worth bearing in
mind that protein is quite filling. Despite those people who claim to be carnivores, you cannot make
all your feast meat dishes (consideration of vegetarians aside). In fact about one third of your dishes
being meat or protein based is probably sufficient. If you absolutely have to have lots of meat or
protein dishes, consider reducing the serving sizes, so people are only getting a little bit of each.
You will need between ten and thirty recipes depending on the size, budget and nature of your
feast. It may be worth picking a few extra at this stage because you may need to cull some later on.
Creating courses
The issue of how many courses or removes to have is a matter of fashion and it comes and goes, but
two or three is usual. Two or three seems to be standard in period menus too – two for smaller
dinners and three for special occasions. Five to seven dishes in each remove is about right, but you
can cut that down to three or four for a final remove, especially if it is a dessert remove.
The issue of how to divide your shortlist up among the removes or courses is slightly trickier. There
are a number of approaches and not a lot of guidance from period sources, at least not a lot of
consistent guidance.
Mediaeval culinary science was based on the doctrine of the humours. The foods that one ate, and
the order in which one ate them were supposed to balance the humours and ease digestion. The
foods served early in a meal were supposed to open the stomach and prepare the way for richer and
less easily digested foods that followed. The final dishes of the meal closed the stomach and aided
further digestion. Ideas about what fit into these categories don’t always match with what we might
think. Wine and spices, for instance, were among those things that aided digestion. There also
wasn’t a lot of agreement among period writers about what things fit into those categories. For
instance, some classed ‘gross meats’ (mostly boiled joints) as foods that should be eaten earlier on,
and some as foods that should be eaten later. Further, if you look at actual mediaeval menus they
often seem to ignore these rules and mix things up together. There were also distinct regional
variations. For instance the French seem to have been very specific about noting that a meal should
finish with hypocras, wafers, fruit and sweetmeats.
So where does that leave us? I tend to follow two principles, both of which I suspect fit somewhat
into the period mindset, and produce periodish feasts. The first is the principle of ‘fill them up first’.
This means that you feed people substantial dishes like soups and stews in the first remove, and
hopefully can then serve them smaller portions of richer and more expensive dishes in the second
(and/or third) removes. The second is the principle of ‘have some entrees’. In this you serve light
and tasty food in the first remove (small pies and pasties for instance) to whet people’s appetites for
the more substantial food to follow. This second one leads to feasts that are a little bit more like
modern meals and with which modern diners may be more comfortable. You can, of course, mix
them up (say soup and pies in the first course followed by roasts and substantial stews or vegetables
dishes in the second).
The issue of a dessert course is a hairy one. Mediaeval diners didn’t do dessert (except for the
minimal thing of the French noted above). Mostly they mixed sweet dishes in with the savoury in
the ordinary removes. In the sixteenth century you are safer with a dessert course (although this
was called a ‘banquet’ at the time). These days I tend to lean towards two substantial savoury
courses with one sweet dish in each and then a small dessert course at the end. This keeps things
kind of period but at the same time caters to modern stomachs which are not used to finishing up
with savouries, especially if the feast goes late into the evening.
Besides these principles you should think about the range of flavours and textures you are putting
together into a remove or course. A range is better than a series of dishes that are all very similar,
but by the same token a rich custard might not sit well on top of an acidic pickled dish. Besides this
you need to offer a range of dishes so that people who do not like a particular ingredient (or can’t
eat it for some reason) can still enjoy more than one or two dishes from the course. This includes
both meat and vegetable dishes.
More constraints
So now you have something that looks like a menu. Don’t be fooled. This is only the first draft of
your menu. Now you need to revisit it, and make sure it meets a number of constraints.
Allergies, intolerances and dietary restrictions
As a cook it is easy to become frustrated with the range of allergies you can be presented with by
feast guests. However, most of them can be catered for by having a wide variety of dishes and
flavours in your feast and by providing information on the ingredients contained in each one.
However there are some major allergens and dietary restrictions which are relatively common and
which should be taken into account early on (if only for the sake of your sanity – last minute menu
revisions are not fun). These are meat (ie vegetarians), dairy and gluten (or wheat). At this stage you
should go through your menu and your dishes and check which ones are meat, dairy and/or gluten
free. Ideally someone who cannot eat one of these things should still have at least three dishes in
any remove which they can eat. Beware of vegans, who will not eat either meat or dairy, but these
seem to be less common than they used to be (at feasts anyway).
If your proposed menu does not meet these guidelines then considering either shuffling some of the
dishes around or replacing one or more of dishes with something more appropriate. It is often
possible to find a dish that is similar in its balance of flavours, but does not contain the allergen. For
instance, you might replace a rich, meaty pie with a stew that is similar to the pie filling (but having
no crust is now gluten free).
If you really want to retain certain dishes consider making substitutions for problematic ingredients
or omitting them altogether. For instance you can switch rice flour for flour (although only in certain
circumstances) or leave out the cheese in the mushroom pasties (or in some of the mushroom
pasties). Be careful to note where this might lead to extra expense or work.
Budget
At this point you need to work out whether your draft menu is feasible given your budget. The best
way I find to do this is in a spreadsheet (you can do this with a bit of paper and a calculator if you
don’t have access to spreadsheet software, but the spreadsheet is much easier).
This screenshot shows the basic idea. Here is part of a feast menu costing for a cheese tart. Each
ingredient for the dish is listed. Beside it we list the quantity of each ingredient required per person.
Here we need 10gms of cheese per person. You work this out by finding the recipe and dividing the
quantity of each ingredient by the number of persons the dish is intended for. Bear in mind that
most recipes presented in cookery books assume you will be eating that dish alone for dinner, and
most people eat less than this of individual dishes at a feast. Where most recipes say they are for six,
you can assume they will serve ten at a feast.
The fourth column (ignore the column of 1’s) shows the price for each ingredient and the one after
that is the quantity to which this price applies (using the same units as the quantity per person).
Hence we are assuming that cheese costs $15 per kilo, and pastry costs $6 for 12 sheets. Finally we
calculate the price per person per ingredient as the quantity per person * the price / the price
quantity. For example 10*15/1000 tells us that we will be spending 15c per person to buy the
cheese for this dish.
You can add up these costs to get the total per person for the dish (shown on the right at the
bottom). For this dish it is 34c. When we add up all these costs we get the per person cost of the
feast. Since most feast budgets are expressed as per person allowances you can see pretty easily
whether your menu is on, under or over budget.
This may seem a bit complex, especially if you are not numerically inclined. However once you’ve
got this all set up you can see how changing things will affect your budget very easily. You can also
see where the main costs of your feast are coming from and make decisions accordingly. For
instance, you might see that you are spending a huge amount per person on ground almonds and
decide to make plain rice instead of rice with almond milk. And finally you can generate shopping
lists very easily too, by simply multiplying the quantities per person by the number of people coming
to the feast (when you finally find out what this will be).
You should try and be as realistic as possible about the prices at which you will get things. Don’t
expect to find things on sale unless you can guarantee it. Take seasonal changes in prices into
account. Ask around among other SCA cooks to find good places to get cheap or rare or bulk
ingredients.
If your menu is approximately on budget, well done! If it is over budget you will have to consider
removing dishes, altering dishes to use less of expensive ingredients, or allowing people to have a
smaller serving of expensive dishes. If it is well under budget you could add more dishes, but be
careful you don’t present yourself with too much work in the process. It is better to have a nice,
well-run feast that is under budget than an on-budget feast that leaves you stressed and harassed.
On the other hand, if you took some dishes out because you thought they might be too expensive,
now you can put them back in.
Logistics
This is the point where you realise that your menu looks great, but there’s no way you can cook 5kg
of roast meat and reheat pies for the same remove when all the kitchen has is a single, normal-sized
oven. These kinds of issues are less likely to mean you need to remove things from your menu, but
more that you may need to shuffle things around. You should think about what can be cooked
before hand, and whether you are likely to get enough help to do this; for what things you might
need extra equipment, and whether this is feasible; and whether you can cook things earlier and
reheat them later.
Are we done yet?
Actually, yes. After all these considerations you should now have something approaching a final
menu. It should be noted that you should be consulting throughout this process with your feast
steward. They may have useful suggestions. Minor tweaks may arise from other sources. For
instance, if it turns out that someone with a very severe allergy is coming to the feast, or if what was
expected to be a cheap source of a certain ingredient becomes unavailable. You may need to change
your menu right up to the last minute if, for example, someone who was precooking for you gets
sick and can’t do it.