Cooking and Dining in Medieval England

Rob Hardy's wonderful review says it all--almost. I want to add that anthropologists like me will LOVE this book--it's both archaeologically and culturally sophisticated, and even has some biological anthro (nutrition levels) and linguistics (lots on Middle English), thus hitting all our "four fields." In particular, it's an archaeologists' dream, correcting a lot of mistakes in the archeo literature and adding much to knowledge. Historians will also benefit. The old nonsense about Europe being boorish and uncouth in the Middle Ages, with kings wiping their hands on passing dogs or throwing food at each other, is still very much with us, and Norbert Elias' nonsense about "civilizing missions" is still taken seriously. This book corrects all that, going into great detail about medieval manners, which, for the elite, were more persnickety than anything today, and even for the ordinary people were pretty refined. The fact is that there has never been a society without table manners. Even small hunting-gathering bands have their etiquette and taboos. It is worth noting that Brears is such a good writer that the reader never tires of even the most minute descriptions of buckets, knives, and tablecloths. Especially if the reader is an archaeology junkie (as I am), but I should think anyone who cares about food would be interested. The recipes are modernized and thus much more usable than the originals, which never bother with things like quantity or preparation details. Overall, the reader gets an amazing sense of what real life was like in that world. Brears quotes the old proverb "the past is a different country," and indeed the English middle ages was little like anything today--though many of the high points of this book are Brears' reminiscences of his experience with ancient customs still practiced in remote corners of Britain in his youth.

this book, all 484 pages with an additional 120 of bibliography and indices, is very well researched and organized. the scholarship is outstanding with numerous drawings of floorplans to illustrate the text. the 'recipes' are clear with thorough and interesting commentary on both the ingredients and purpose or rationale behind the technique. the author also explains how these early foods have morphed into more common current dishes.A really great read for anyone interested in medieval domestic life, early european food history or the evolution of european domestic architecture

This well-documented volume has pretty much every detail a person might want to know on this topic. The details of the systems and practices used to keep people fed during this period are fascinating, and the writing is engaging enough to hold the reader's interest throughout despite the book's substantial length.

This book is so easy to read Peter Brears does a wonderful of job of explaining the process, food, kitchen and everything that is need to research and understand medieval cooking. I have barely put it down since I have opened it up. If your interested to learn history and how food affected it and how to truly cook medieval this book is a must have.

Loved the historical and anthropological aspects of this well-researched and well-written book. The recipes are a bit difficult considering our modern pantry shelves aren't stocked with many of the items, but they are doable, and for the most part, much healthier than our meals today. A very nice resource for the discerning cook who is also interested in the origins and methods of that day and age.

This book is filled with information about the medieval period and a bit thereafter. A wonderful book!!!!

If you have any idea of how people ate in England six hundred years ago, you may well have gotten it from Hollywood productions featuring castles in which rollicking banqueters dined exclusively on whole suckling pig, and practiced their belching and food-throwing at table. It won't come as any surprise that what makes good movies can make bad history. If you are interested in food, cooking, and historic recipes, and you want to get a more accurate picture than Hollywood offers, Peter Brears is your man. He started work in British museums fifty years ago, and worked in the excavation of various castles. He not only catalogued domestic artifacts but used reproductions of the old tools, old stoves, and old foodstuffs to bring forth authentic medieval banquets. In a massive study, _Cooking & Dining in Medieval England_ (Prospect Books), Brears looks at every aspect of the subject, from kitchen design, tools, and techniques to what happened to the leftovers when all was done. The chapters, each of which explains a specific office of the kitchen like the bakehouse or the saucery, have recipes included, so that those who want to eat like knights and their ladies can do so. Each chapter is also richly illustrated with useful line drawings by the author himself, making this a particularly good-looking volume.Kitchens were integrally planned within medieval castles and houses. These ancient structures were planned out, not thrown together, and we even know the names of some of the architects. Since the kitchen was a central core of domestic effort, the architects took its situation into consideration, first with detached kitchens and then with those integral within the castle. The architect had to plan for security of food and utensils, efficiency of food preparation, and cleanliness. Every department gets its chapter here, including the Dairy, the Brewhouse, the Boiling House, and the Buttery. That last one has nothing to do with dairy products, but rather of the butts, or barrels, of liquid refreshment. There is a fascinating chapter on kitchen tools, many of which would not look out of place in a modern kitchen. Others like horsetail plants used to clean pewter are long gone (the plant was called "scourwort" or "pewterwort"). Brears explains that the meals were timed to daylight hours, which would be very early in the winter, and the fare of course varied by season, but varied most of all because of religious proscriptions in a complicated calendar of feast and fast days. He also points out that there was cleverness (or knavery) in getting around meatless days or weeks. It was all right, some said, during all-fish fasts to serve barnacle geese since these were from barnacles or even grew on trees, and since beavers had scales on their tails, the tail ("weight up to 4 lb, and being very good eating") was acceptable.You won't find beaver tails in the extensive recipes here, nor such things as lampreys which were considered a great delicacy. You will find hedgehog, but thankfully this a pork ball fitted with almond slivers to act as hedgehog spines. There is other whimsy here: you might try cooking a cockatrice, a mythical creature believed hatched from a hen's egg incubated by a snake. This chimera was manufactured with the front part of a rooster joined to the hind of a pig. Do not be surprised to find Cream Bastard ("A Custard Without Yolks"). You will find plenty of pottage, but Brears reminds us that this is merely a term for something cooked in a pot. He has apparently had experience with medieval re-enactors who get this wrong. "`This,' they exclaim, "is pottage!" - thrusting forward a bowl of grim, grey, and gritty gruel, unskimmed, smoke-flavoured and foul. Any medieval cook who served such a mess would have been soundly disciplined or, perhaps even worse, made to eat it." He also berates the chefs on TV who bake "pig's heads in the oven without any preparation, thus producing an unhygienic, inedible, and wasteful mess, totally alien to the magnificent medieval dish." Let them instead follow his extensive directions here, starting with boning and pickling three weeks ahead of serving, and finishing with re-insertion of the tusks for show, and half-cherries for eyes. The recipes are modernized when necessary; medieval cooks used a lot of verjuice, for instance, which was commonly the juice of crab apples, and here lemon juice or white wine vinegar is substituted. And if you really want to get medieval, you can make all the food and prepare a party such as the one for Archbishop Neville's enthronement, which Brears illustrates comic-book style in seventy panels, from setting up the tables to everyone's departure. If Brears ever asks you to dinner, go. In the chapter on the saucery, he tells about making Sauce Ginger, Sauce Parsley, Sauce Rous, and more, explaining that these were kept in tall jugs in the medieval saucery, but "I now keep them all in glass jars for use at everyday meals."

Good, enjoyable book, lots of detail and many facts. It starts with explaining the mechanics and management of how food was obtained and cooked in all stratas of society, but mainly in the "grander" gentry (and upwards) houses. The layout of splitting the dscriptions up into functions such as water supply, the dairy, the brewhouse, the bakehouse, etc., works well and their interactions explained. There are also recipes included for you to try if you feel like "going the whole hog" and experience what medieval food actually tasted like.

Big book, some of the plans and drawings a little unclear and confusing. Well researched

great useful knowledge