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Goutte Housekeeping
a column on medieval cookery

Entering Cooking Competitions
Or, How to be a Spoonhead

Wulfric of Creigull

This column has some tips to make entering Wooden and Silver Spoon competitions easier. These are things I have learned over the last few years as I have entered and judged competitions. Of course, these are my opinions only and should not be taken as the One True Way of Entering. But I hope it will help.

The five categories used to judge entries are Taste, Documentation, Authenticity, Appearance, and Presentation.

Taste is the most important factor in an entry. It is worth a maximum of ten points; the other categories are five each. It is usually the most obvious if done poorly. So try your recipe out a few times. Get the wrinkles out. Try it on your friends. If they hate it and won't speak to you afterwards, chances are the judges might not like it either. We are modem people with modem tastes, most people will not like all medieval foods. A properly prepared medieval dish may still taste bad to people (one example is Noumbles, a recipe for entrails). Keep this in mind when picking a recipe to enter in the competition.

Documentation: this is the most common problem with entries, and even easier to fix. I have found that this is a good checklist for your documentation: the original recipe; the modem translation if it is not patently obvious; your interpreted ingredients and recipe; changes made from the original recipe and why. Nothing says that you have to stick precisely to the original, but you should be able to justify your changes. For example, a medieval jam recipe calls for boiling peeled apples in the jam to provide pectin. Commercial pectin could be substituted for ease of use , but you should mention this so that the judges know that you understand. When thinking about what to say, pretend that the judges know very little about cooking. Sometimes this is (deliberately) the case. Typed entries are easier to read and makes it more likely that the judges will read it all the way through. Also, try to keep it down to a page or two. Unnecessary length will bore the readers. If you can bring multiple copies, that also makes it easier for all the judges to appreciate your work.

(And a personal bugaboo don't type in a medievallish calligraphy font. It's just plain hard to read.)

Authenticity: you should work from a medieval recipe, rather than modifying something modern to a medieval style. The point of what we do is to cook within the medieval framework. Some modifications have to be made (not using lead cookware, or ingredients such as rue that are hard to find); but the dish as a whole should be as medieval as possible. If you can provide other examples of recipes in the same style, this will generally help.

Appearance: how does the entry itself look? Is the bread burned or an even gold color? Does the fruit look fresh? This category is fairly easy to satisfy with a little thought and effort. Also, a variety of colors in a dish will be more attractive than one that is all brown.

Presentation: is the food presented in a manner that is period for its time and location? Taste is the most important factor, but your entry should look nice too. This can be a deciding factor between two equal entries. Try to take some care with your dish. For example in the first competition I won, I entered a rose pudding. I put portions in several ceramic goblets and decorated the top of each pudding with nuts in a flower like pattern. My entry had an instant advantage over anything plopped down in a plastic bowl. (And the other reason I did this was that the pudding "skin" on top had been marred in travel. Putting a decorative touch on top hid the flaw, turning it into a bonus.)

I hope this helps any aspiring Spoon entrants. Don't be intimidated by the contests, they are here to help us learn about medieval food and to have fun. If you have any comments or other suggestions for things that have worked for you, please feel free to contact me.

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