Choosing sources
My initial goal was to find multiple contemporary sources to compare and contrast to gain an overall understanding of the cuisine of a particular context. Because this was the first attempt at creating a new event format with a number of unknowns, I chose to give myself the advantage of using primary sources that I could read myself – this meant French. I had previously worked with Le Ménagier de Paris, and Le Viandier and Du Fait de Cuisine became obvious choices as relative contemporaries. Because Europe had a shared food culture at this time, including cooks learning from others across the continent, the additional supplementary sources that were contemporary but from elsewhere in Christendom made sense to fill in some uncertainties.
Ingredients Costs
In order to guide feasibility and stay within budget, after creating my initial huge list of recipes, I then noted all possible ingredients and created a cost spreadsheet to compare and track pricing. For the bulk of the items, I compared prices with CostCo, Sam’s Club, Walmart, and Lidl. For specialty items, I used Amazon, Penzey’s Spices, and local markets or distributors as needed. The information from the first four was sufficient to narrow down my budget, however.
Selecting Recipes
My first process was simply to read through my three main sources and mark recipes that seemed interesting, unique, or specific to the context, as well as those that seemed similar to modern dishes to create a menu the modern diner would enjoy. This was really just putting hundreds of sticky notes in my books that I would come back to later. Once I had big books full of sticky notes, I created a spreadsheet dividing recipes into six modern categories with the intention of serving one dish from each category in each course. This also allowed me to indicate multiple references for similar recipes within the same source or across different sources – the same information I later used on the website in each recipe.
Recipe Development
This is probably the thing most interesting to people, and unfortunately one where I can offer the least explicit direction. Because of the overarching lack of specific quantities, but the high importance of spice usage in the context, I decided that the first step was to set a standard of how spices would be used. Since my goal was to interpret a feast for modern diners with the right flavors, I used the data presented on how frequently a spice was used as well as the few recipes that did give specific quantities to create spice blends that captured those ratios (LM Major, LM Minor, DF Major, DF Minor, and Fine Powder.) When a recipe called for fewer than all of the spices, I let these same ratios still guide how they were used.
Frequency of Recipes Containing the Given Spice
Quantity of Spice Directed to be Purchased
After I had formulated my spice ratios, it came down to a lot of time in the kitchen testing recipes in an effort to interpret the directions presented and make educated guesses at the expected outcome. Here I was guided by my first principle that people want to eat food that tastes good, and my notes on the development of each specific recipe can be found on their individual recipe pages in the Banquet section. All in all, I spent a great deal of time writing dry erase notes on my stainless steel refrigerator – erasing and updating with each iteration of the recipe until I was satisfied with it.
Once satisfied with the recipe, I transcribed each one into my Recipe Development spreadsheet, scaled for a single table of eight guests. I used a separate tab for each recipe, which allowed me to also add costing information to the sheet. The entire sheet is embedded below. Costing information was gathered using another spreadsheet with prices I noted from our major local options – CostCo, Sam’s Club, H Mart, and Lidl. Purchasing ingredients from the best priced option, CostCo in particular, was the key to making this feast on a reasonable budget.
After testing the final recipes as-written, eliminating some dishes due to quality or menu constraints, and cutting the menu back to five dishes per course, I scaled each recipe up to feed our 16 tables of 8. This was transcribed in a new spreadsheet, affectionately named “Now Make it Big” which you can review below. Here each recipe was given its own tab, formatted, with information about dietary restrictions, service temperature, service vessels, etc. I intended for this to be the final form, but ultimately ended up making one more set of edits. This sheet contained the full recipe information for each dish, so anyone could recreate our entire menu from this sheet.
Dietary Restrictions
Planning to meet guests dietary restrictions is a huge piece of inclusivity for me, and one I have a great deal of experience with professionally. One of the easiest things to eliminate from most period menus, ironically, is gluten. I go into detail on each recipe to explain how I chose to make both no-gluten and vegetarian substitutions where necessary, so I encourage you to review those. In the Behind the Curtain – Event Planning section, I also discuss how these needs were tracked and met the day of the event. You will also see evidence of this in the kitchen planning documents above and below. Meeting these needs with intention and skill is an important part of a truly successful event.
Shopping List
Once all of the recipes had been decided and scaled up, I was able to prepare my final shopping list and check this against my budget in real time. Prices changed dramatically on some items over the course of the six month interval, so I actually took a trip to all four of my main suppliers to update the Ingredients Costs sheet (above.) Using a spreadsheet allowed me to easily compile quantities of ingredients since many are used across multiple dishes, and helped me ensure I was staying within budget as things evolved. It also served as a good spot to save links to specialty items I knew I would need to order online.
Final Event Preparation
In addition to planning the materials needed to create the food, I also needed a realistic plan for producing all of the food, both the week prior, and on site the day before and day of. This was an absolutely crucial part of our success. I also had to plan how all of the ingredients and finished dishes could be safely stored to meet food safety guidelines. This also helped me create the timeline for each dish in the final information below this sheet.
The final iteration of the information for our kitchen staff came in the form of a printed book, aka the Kitchen Bible. This had a sheet for each dish which gave explicit directions on how to prepare the dish from the point it was at. I had done a great deal of cooking in advance, so the full recipes would only have been added unnecessary information for our kitcheners. A full, bound copy was printed for my kitchen manager, and a second set of individual sheets was printed to divide among the kitcheners who were responsible for each dish.