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Publisher's Notes:
Highlighting the world's first professional kitchen, this volume showcases the massive galleys at Hampton Court Palace. Illustrating how kitchens originally built to supply the entire household of King Henry VIII were run, this guide dispels many of the misconceptions about the table manners, quality of cooking, and serving of meals in Tudor England. Authentic recipes - adapted for modern kitchens - from the period are featured, including Chicken Farced, Smothered Rabbit, and White Leach. Accentuated with striking visuals, this history revives the sights, sounds, and smells of the Tudor kitchen while conveying the daily life of the era's rich and poor.

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Publisher's Notes:
Ancient Roman gastronomy was famous for an incomparable skill in the art of pairing the ingredients, with its Mediterranean flavors and healthy balance among the aromas.Many sources record the greatness of Roman cuisine. Writers and poets celebrate its beauty, complexity, decadence, and at the same time, its simplicity. Agronomists tell the life in the countryside, showing the farming techniques and the preparation of common preserves, from cured meat to cheese, vegetables, fruit. Cooks focus on providing unique sensorial experiences through the learned use of ingredients that belong to our history, now almost forgotten. Silphium, garum, mulsum, allec, sapa are just some of them.A journey back in time through ingredients and recipes, from the republican age to the empire, to rediscover an extraordinary culinary tradition that will satisfy, still today, the most refined palates.

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Publisher's Notes:
The two earlier books A Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Food and A Second Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Food & Drink have been brough together in one volume. This provides a vast amount of information (544 pages) at a reasonable price.

A picture is provided of how food was grown, conserved, prepared and eaten during the period from the beginning of the 5th century to the 11th century.

Food production for home consumption was the basis of economic activity throughout the Anglo-Saxon period and ensuring access to an adequate food supply was a constant preoccupation. Used as payment and a medium of trade, food was the basis of the Anglo-Saxons' system of finance and administration. Information from literary and archaeological sources has been brought together for the first time to give insights into this important aspect of Anglo-Saxon life.

The west of Britain is also covered.

An extensive index enables the reader to quickly find specific information.

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Publisher's Notes:
Anthimus was a Greek doctor condemned by the Emperor in Constantinople to a life of exile at the court of Theodoric the Ostrogoth, barbarian ruler of Italy at the beginning of the 6th century AD. In the course of his life in Ravenna, he was sent as ambassador to the King of the Franks and wrote, perhaps as a sweetener to his fierce yet royal host, a letter about foods – which were good for you, which bad, and, sometimes, how to cook and serve them. It may reasonably be called the first French cookery book; and this is a new and more accurate modern language edition, printed with the Latin and English in parallel on facing pages.

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Publisher's Notes:
The sequence in which food has been served at meals has changed greatly over the centuries and has also varied from one country to another, a fact noted in virtually every culinary history. Most food writers have treated the more significant alterations as stand-alone events. The most famous example of such a change occurred in the nineteenth century, when service à la française - in which the stunning presentation made a great show but diners had to wait to be served - gave way to service à la russe, in which platters were passed among diners who served themselves. But in Arranging the Meal, the late culinary historian Jean-Louis Flandrin argues that such a change in the order of food service is far from a distinct event. Instead he regards it as a historical phenomenon, one that happened in response to socioeconomic and cultural factors - another mutation in an ever-changing sequence of customs. As France's most illustrious culinary historian, Flandrin has become a cult figure in France, and this posthumous book is not only his final word but also a significant contribution to culinary scholarship. A foreword by Beatrice Fink places Flandrin's work in context and offers a personal remembrance of this French culinary hero.

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Publisher's Notes:
In Art, Culture, and Cuisine, Phyllis Pray Bober examines cooking through an assortment of recipes as well as the dual lens of archaeology and art history. Believing that the unity of a culture extends across all forms of expression, Bober seeks to understand the minds and hearts of those who practiced cookery or consumed it as reflected in the visual art of the time.

Bober draws on archaeology and art history to examine prehistoric eating customs in ancient Turkey; traditions of the great civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome; and rituals of the Middle Ages. Both elegant and entertaining, Art, Culture, and Cuisine reveals cuisine and dining's place at the heart of cultural, religious, and social activities that have shaped Western sensibilities.

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Publisher's Notes:
A compendium on practically all aspects of the art of cooking and dining... Because of the author's familiarity with all aspects of the subject we are offered this rara avis: a book which interests the specialist and the general reader; which allies common sense with scholarship; and which presents the theory and practice of medieval cooking for the scholar and the practitioner... has its place on the shelves of the practical cook as well as on those of the scholar: both can feed on it! HISTORY The master cook who worked in the noble kitchens of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had to be both practical and knowledgeable. His apprenticeship acquainted him with a range of culinary skills and a wide repertoire of seasonal dishes, but he was also required to understand the inherent qualities of the foodstuffs he handled, as determined by contemporary medical theories, and to know the lean-day strictures of the Church. Research in original manuscript sources makes this a fascinating and authoritative study where little hard fact had previously existed.

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Publisher's Notes:
In 1599 Henry Buttes wrote a slightly comical cookbook for the Bacon family, in order to raise funds for the construction of a church.

For the first time in modern history you may review Buttes' eight course feast, based on Elizabethan humours, edited for the modern kitchen. Original recipes, commentary on the medieval humours of each main ingredient, stories to amuse a Tudor noble, and explanations of Buttes' dry witticisms (plus a comprehensive glossary), make this book both the resource and discussion piece for your explorations into Tudor cuisine.

For those who like to experiment with cooking and want to have some historical fun playing in the kitchen or at the campfire.

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Publisher's Notes:
Wynkyn de Worde's elegant black-letter handbook, long out of print, remains a major source of information on the serving and eating of meals and feasts in the great houses of late medieval and early Tudor England. Southover's reprint carries a facsimile of the original text from Cambridge University Library, with a modern interpretation facing each page. The book explains in detail the intricate rituals of setting and waiting at table, how to prepare the dishes to be served and exactly what was eaten at different times of the year, and was written as an instruction manual for well-born boys as part of their early education. It also tells the reader how to carve meat, fowls and fish and to sauce each dish with its appropriate accompaniments, some of them very sophisticated. A description is included of the chamberlain's duties in his lord's chamber, dressing him and preparing him for church, and for bed. There is an interesting section on the order of precedence on feast days and great occasions.

Peter Brears writes an Introduction and provides a glossary and drawings to explain the complicated rituals, including the arrangement of cloths before and at the end of meals. His research into traditional domestic life, combined with extensive experience of cooking authentic meals in historic properties, has given him a unique knowledge of English food history. He was for twenty years director of York Castle as well as of Leeds City Museums. His books include The Gentlewoman's Kitchen (1984); Traditional Food in Yorkshire (1987); All the King's Cooks (1999), and The Compleat Housekeeper (2000).

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Publisher's Notes:
The Book of Sent Soví, composed around the middle of the fourteenth century, is the oldest surviving culinary text in Catalan. It is anonymous and, like the majority of medieval cookery books, is the product of a complex process of transmission, with multiple manuscript copies and readers who have left their mark on it. The contents are eminently practical. Successive cooks have recorded their own methods of preparing the dishes and recipes included, blending several culinary traditions in a single work. Sent Soví is also a reliable source of information on the cookery of the territories of the Crown of Aragon before the revolution caused by the arrival of products from the Americas.

This edition includes both an English translation, by Robin Vogelzang, and the original Catalan version. It has been the editor's aim to clarify the difficult passages in the book - sometimes corrupted because of the complex manuscript tradition - so that it can be understood as easily as possible by its twenty-first-century readers.

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Publisher's Notes:
"Do not let the peasant know how good cheese is with pears" goes the old saying. Intrigued by these words and their portent, Massimo Montanari unravels their origin and utility. Perusing archival cookbooks, agricultural and dietary treatises, literary works, and anthologies of beloved sayings, he finds in the nobility's demanding palates and delicate stomachs a compelling recipe for social conduct.

At first, cheese and its visceral, earthy pleasures were treated as the food of Polyphemus, the uncivilized man-beast. The pear, on the other hand, became the symbol of ephemeral, luxuriant pleasure-an indulgence of the social elite. Joined together, cheese and pears adopted an exclusive savoir faire, especially as the "natural phenomenon" of taste evolved into a cultural attitude. Montanari's delectable history straddles written and oral traditions, economic and social relations, and thrills in the power of mental representation. His ultimate discovery shows that the enduring proverb, so wrapped up in history, operates not only as a repository of shared wisdom but also as a rich locus of social conflict.

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Publisher's Notes:
As chief cook of Duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy (the future Pope Felix V), Chiquart was responsible both for the daily fare consumed at his master's court and for any formal Savoyard state banquets. The On Cookery, dictated by Chiquart in 1420, preserves precious evidence of how all of a chef's duties could be splendidly fulfilled in the most glorious European courts of his time. Chiquart provides detailed advice on how to arrange all the cooking facilities for a grand two-day banquet, to procure the huge quantities and variety of foodstuffs necessary, and then meticulously to prepare 81 of the most delicious dishes which might be served in it. The translator's Introduction examines Chiquart's unique work against the background of contemporary European culinary theory and practice.

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Publisher's Notes:
Cocatrice and Lampray Hay is our title for this edition of the Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS F 291, which contains 99 recipes written in English (showing signs, the experts claim, of East Anglian provenance). The recipes are remarkable for their close attention to detail and much greater information about quantities of ingredients than similar collections from earlier centuries. They include dishes such as the famous cocatrice or basilisk, which is a combination of pig and chicken constructed as a fabulous beast, to the more mundane, but more cookable, blancmanges, stewed oysters, croustades, pies, venison, beef and chicken dishes. The edition gives the original text, a translation into modern English, a full commentary, and notes for the modern cook who wishes to interpret each dish in his or her own kitchen. The volume closes with a glossary or recipe titles and a concordance of this collection supplementary to the editor's fuller and earlier concordance of all medieval English recipes, allowing the reader to place this group in some form of culinary context.

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Publisher's Notes:
This work is a concordance to culinary recipes recorded in England in the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries: the earliest English culinary recipes on record. A few of medieval origin which continued to be recorded in the 16th and 17th centuries appear in an appendix. The recipes listed have all appeared in print; unpublished manuscripts known to the authors have been excluded since most readers would be unable to refer to them. Recipes are listed under their titles as they appear in the source manuscripts, collated in order alphabetically under their lemmatized recipe names.

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Publisher's Notes:
The history of medieval food and cookery has received a fair amount of attention from the point of view of recipes (of which many survive)and of the general context of feasts and feasting. It has never, as yet, been studied with an eye to the real mechanics of food production and service: the equipment used, the household organisation, the architectural arrangements for kitchens, store-rooms, pantries, larders, cellars, and domestic administration. This new work by Peter Brears, perhaps Britain's foremost expert on the historical kitchen, looks at these important elements of cooking and dining. He also subjects the many surviving documents relating to food service - household ordinances, regulations and commentaries - to critical study in an attempt to reconstruct the precise rituals and customs of dinner.

An underlying intention is to rehabilitate the medieval Englishman as someone with a nice appreciation of food and cookery, decent manners, and a delicate sense of propriety and seemliness. To dispel the myth, that is, of medieval feasting as an orgy of gluttony and bad manners, usually provided with meat that has gone slightly off, masked by liberal additions of heady spices.

A series of chapters looks at the cooking departments in large households:the counting house, dairy, brewhouse, pastry, boiling house and kitchen. These are illustrated by architectural perspectives of surviving examples in castles and manor houses throughout the land. Then there are chapters dealing with the various sorts of kitchen equipment: fires, fuel, pots and pans. Sections are then devoted to recipes and types of food cooked. The recipes are those which have been used and tested by Peter Brears in hundreds of demonstrations to the public and cooking for museum displays. Finally there are chapters on the service of dinner (the service departments including the buttery, pantry and ewery) and the rituals that grew up around these. Here, Peter Brears has drawn a wonderful strip cartoon of the serving of a great feast (the washing of hands, the delivery of napery, the tasting for poison, etc.) which will be of permanent utility to historical re-enactors who wish to get their details right.

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Publisher's Notes:
Ever get a yen for hemp seed soup, digestive pottage, carp fritters, jasper of milk, or frog pie? Would you like to test your culinary skills whipping up some edible counterfeit snow or nun's bozolati? Perhaps you have an assignment to make a typical Renaissance dish. The cookbook presents 171 unadulterated recipes from the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Elizabethan era. Most are translated from French, Italian, or Spanish into English for the first time. Some English recipes from the Elizabethan era are presented only in the original if they are close enough to modern English to present an easy exercise in translation. Expert commentary helps readers to be able to replicate the food as nearly as possible in their own kitchens.

An introduction overviews cuisine and food culture in these time periods and prepares the reader to replicate period food with advice on equipment, cooking methods, finding ingredients, and reading period recipes. The recipes are grouped by period and then type of food or "course." Three lists of recipes-organized by how they appear in the book and by country and by special occasions-in the frontmatter help to quickly identify the type of dish desired. Some recipes will not appeal to modern tastes or sensibilities. This cookbook does not sanitize them for the modern palate. Most everything in this book is perfectly edible and, according to the author, noted food historian Ken Albala, delicious!

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Publisher's Notes:
The first volume of Peter Brears’ history of English cookery covered the Middle Ages. It was so good that it won outright the André Simon Award for the best food book of 2009. This will be even better. It treats of an heroic period in English history when new foods were reaching our shores from the New World, and new styles of cooking were being adopted from France and Italy. Even more important, it’s a period that has barely been touched upon by previous accounts. What is unique about Brears’ book is that he combines an account of the cookery with a close look at the practical arrangements, the kitchens and dining halls, where that food was cooked and consumed. His prose is enlivened by his drawings – as accurate as can be – which lay bare to the modern reader just what was going on in places like Hampton Court palace, as well as in humbler homes throughout the land. There are plenty of recipes for those who like to try things for themselves, all properly tested by the author, who is a historic food consultant to TV and country house owners.The era begins with the near medieval styles of Henry VII and VIII, with special attention to Henry VIII’s propagandizing banquets and feasts for foreign monarchs; progresses to the reign of Elizabeth, the effects of new foodstuffs from America, and treats some the great houses of the Tudor aristocracy; and finishes with the first two Stuart kings, James I and Charles I under whose rule we began to move towards a more modern style of cooking and when we also started to produce cookery books in large number.Peter Brears is former Director of the Leeds City Museums and one of England’s foremost authorities on domestic artifacts and historical kitchens and cooking technology. This year he is also publishing Traditional Food in Yorkshire with Prospect Books.

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Publisher's Notes:
The great advantage for students of medieval English cookery is that there is an identifiable corpus of evidence in the manuscripts that have survived to the present day. Although there may be some new discoveries, in general terms the corpus is relatively stable. The beauty of this book is that it addresses the corpus as a whole and abstracts from it paradigm recipes for every medieval dish that we know about. With this book therefore a student can ask ‘How did they cook rabbit stew?’ and find a definitive answer, in modern English, with full references. This is a great step forward and the book will stand as a monument to the untiring efforts of the late Constance Hieatt to understand and interpret English cookery of the middle ages. The book is organised by category of dish (Pottage; Meat Dishes; Poultry and Game Birds; Fish; Eggs and Dairy Dishes; Sauces and Condiments, and Baked Dishes). For each dish the editor has chosen what is in her view the most typical example and, citing the source, translates the original text.

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Publisher's Notes:
In this revelatory work of social history, C. M. Woolgar shows that food in late-medieval England was far more complex, varied, and more culturally significant than we imagine today. Drawing on a vast range of sources, he charts how emerging technologies as well as an influx of new flavors and trends from abroad had an impact on eating habits across the social spectrum. From the pauper’s bowl to elite tables, from early fad diets to the perceived moral superiority of certain foods, and from regional folk remedies to luxuries such as lampreys, Woolgar illuminates desire, necessity, daily rituals, and pleasure across four centuries.

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Publisher's Notes:
This unique collection of recipes, or menus as they include not only how to make a dish but also how and when to serve it, has been compiled from more than twenty medieval manuscripts. The recipes date from the fourteenth century and are the earliest such examples in English. Interestingly, it appears that many of these recipes, found only on the menus of the upper classes, remained virtually unchanged until the sixteenth century.

The menus include the all-important order of serving, that strict etiquette that ruled medieval mealtimes, and which meant that most members of a household were only entitled to the first course and that the more delicate dishes were served only to the higher ranks. This too seems to have remained unchanged for hundreds of years.

Here we can also see how it was thought natural to take the most substantial foods first, leaving the richer and sweeter courses for later, much as we do today. We do not, however, include small game birds as part of 'dessert' as these menus do.

Presented here in early English, this invaluable collection gives great insight into the medieval kitchen and household, and is the perfect guide to modern recreations of medieval meals and feasts.

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Publisher's Notes:
"Madatolhayat" is one of the few pre-twentieth century Persian culinary sources to have survived. Its author, Nurollah, was the chef to the most renowned king of the Safavid Dynasty, Shah Abbas I (1588-1629). Regarded as one of the greatest monarchs in Persian history, Shah Abbas moved the Safavid capital from Qazvin to Isfahan, reviving its glory and making this ancient city a cosmopolitan center once again by building magnificent architectural edifices, including palaces, mosques, bridges, and boulevards. In fact, Isfahan during his reign acquired the title of "Half the World," and its central square, with its two grand mosques, the Grand Bazaar, and the most important magnificent royal palace, Ali Qapu [the Grand Gate], became a center of government, religion, and commerce and was given the name "the Image of the World." Ali Qapu, a seven-story building, which with the exception of the domes and minarets of the great mosques was the highest building in the city even up to the second half of the twentieth century, was not only the residence of the royal family, but also the place where the king entertained the nobility and foreign emissaries.

In addition to a relatively large number of 16th century royal recipes, Nurollah's manuscript presents to the reader a picture of domestic life in Ali Qapu palace, including not only information about the type of food served but also instances of the king's personal involvement in more mundane tasks, such as cooking and experimenting with food preparation. In Dining at the Safavid Court, M. R. Ghanoonparvar provides us with a translation of Nurollah's culinary treatise, which was presented to his patron, Shah Abbas I, in gratitude for the king's permission to go on an offseason pilgrimage to Mecca, as well as modernized versions of the recipes in The Substance of Life.

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Publisher's Notes:
Transcribed and translated with commentary by Terence Scully. The Archives of the Valais, Switzerland, hold a manuscript a culinary treatise of a certain Chiquart. Dated 1420, the Du fait de cuisine turned out to be a remarkable presentation of fine banquet fare and the best cookery practices of that time. The novel format that Chiquart chose for his work is of a pair of elegant two-day banquets, one for meat days, the other for lean days. Thirty-three more recipes cover contingencies: a prolongation of the banquet and the presence of sick persons at the lord’s court. An initial section of the work lists all the provisions and personnel that a cook should ensure he has at hand. This edition offers an introduction on the alimentary traditions that Chiquart drew upon and contributed to. An English translation, the only full English translation of the text available, accompanies the manuscript text. Footnotes help explain the techniques and procedures that Chiquart uses; an index helps the reader navigate the translated text.

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Publisher's Notes:
"An Early Meal" takes the reader on journey to discover the food culture of Viking Age Scandinavia. In the first part of the book one will learn about what and how the food was cooked and eaten. These facts are illuminated in the second part, which is a cookbook containing forty-two delicious recipes from seven different Viking Age settlements. Both parts of the book are thoroughly based on archaeological finds, historical cooking methods and current research. The two authors of the book have a long background in culinary history. Daniel Serra is working on a doctoral thesis on Viking Age food culture and is an experimental culinary archaeologist. Hanna Tunberg has a background as food connoisseur, taste expert and archaeologist.

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Publisher's Notes:
Early French Cookery introduces the general features of the food prepared for wealthy French households at the end of the Middle Ages. The volume presents over one hundred recipes, drawn from actual medieval manuscripts, and includes an overview of early French culinary traditions, foodstuffs, and methods of preparation. The authors help place these enticing recipes in context through a short survey of medieval dining behavior, and they give practical menu suggestions for simple meals and banquets that incorporate these delicious dishes.

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Publisher's Notes:
Eating right has been an obsession for longer than we think. Renaissance Europe had its own flourishing tradition of dietary advice. Then, as now, an industry of experts churned out diet books for an eager and concerned public. Providing a cornucopia of information on food and an intriguing account of the differences between the nutritional logic of the past and our own time, this inviting book examines the wide-ranging dietary literature of the Renaissance. Ken Albala ultimately reveals the working of the Renaissance mind from a unique perspective: we come to understand a people through their ideas on food.

Eating Right in the Renaissance takes us through an array of historical sources in a narrative that is witty and spiced with fascinating details. Why did early Renaissance writers recommend the herbs parsley, arugula, anise, and mint to fortify sexual prowess? Why was there such a strong outcry against melons and cucumbers, even though people continued to eat them in large quantities? Why was wine considered a necessary nutrient? As he explores these and other questions, Albala explains the history behind Renaissance dietary theories; the connections among food, exercise, and sex; the changing relationship between medicine and cuisine; and much more.

Whereas modern nutritionists may promise a slimmer waistline, more stamina, or freedom from disease, Renaissance food writers had entirely different ideas about the value of eating right. As he uncovers these ideas from the past, Ken Albala puts our own dietary obsessions in an entirely new light in this elegantly written and often surprising new chapter on the history of food.

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Publisher's Notes:
The Edible Monument considers the elaborate architecture, sculpture, and floats made of food that were designed for court and civic celebrations in early modern Europe. These include popular festivals such as Carnival and the Italian Cuccagna. Like illuminations and fireworks, ephemeral artworks made of food were not well documented and were challenging to describe because they were perishable and thus quickly consumed or destroyed. In times before photography and cookbooks, there were neither literary models nor a repertoire of conventional images for how food and its preparation should be explained or depicted.

Although made for consumption, food could also be a work of art, both as a special attraction and as an expression of power. Formal occasions and spontaneous celebrations drew communities together, while special foods and seasonal menus revived ancient legends, evoking memories and recalling shared histories, values, and tastes.

Drawing on books, prints, and scrolls that document festival arts, elaborate banquets, and street feasts, the essays in this volume examine the mythic themes and personas employed to honor and celebrate rulers; the methods, materials, and wares used to prepare, depict, and serve food; and how foods such as sugar were transformed to express political goals or accomplishments.

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Publisher's Notes:
In this universally acclaimed book Elizabeth David deals with all aspects of flour-milling, yeast, bread ovens and the different types of bread and flour available. The recipes cover yeast cookery of all kinds, and the many lovely, old-fashioned spiced breads, buns, pancakes and muffins, among others, are all described with her typical elegance and unrivalled knowledge.

Elizabeth David was the best food writer of her time, and even today is considered to be without peer. ENGLISH BREAD AND YEAST COOKERY was first published by Viking in 1977. Elizabeth David died in 1992.

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Publisher's Notes:
In 1615 Englishman Gervase Markham published a handbook for housewives containing "all the virtuous knowledges and actions both of the mind and body, which ought to be in any complete housewife."

Markham reveals the "pretty and curious secrets" of preparing everything from simple foods to such elaborate meals as a "humble feast" - an undertaking which entails preparing "no less than two and thirty dishes, which is as much as can stand on one table." He instructs the housewife on brewing beer and caring for wine, growing flax and hemp for thread, and spinning and dyeing. As a housewife was also responsible for the health and "soundness of body" of her family, he includes advice on the prevention of everything from the plague to baldness and bad breath.

No other source from this period provides the same richness of information in such a readable style. Michael Best's introduction and his abundant notes make The English Housewife readily accessible to the contemporary reader.

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"Although it is neither a detective story nor primarily a humorous work, there are elements of each in this lively and scholarly book on the broader aspects of food in the Middle Ages... If you would like to know how and when people fasted,... you can read about it here. You can also learn when to spit and how to share a drinking vessel with your neighbor with some delicacy. What was a banquet like?...If you are intrigued by any of this and much more besides, this is the book for you." -- Petits Propos Culinaires

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Publisher's Notes:
Eating and drinking are essential to life and therefore of great interest to the historian. As well as having a real fascination in their own right, both activities are an integral part of the both social and economic history. Yet food and drink, especially in the middle ages, have received less than their proper share of attention. The essays in this volume approach their subject from a variety of angles: from the reality of starvation and the reliance on 'fast food' of those without cooking facilities, to the consumption of an English lady's household and the career of a cook in the French royal household.

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Publisher's Notes:
Food and diet are central to understanding daily life in the middle ages. In the last two decades, the potential for the study of diet in medieval England has changed markedly: historians have addressed sources in new ways; material from a wide range of sites has been processed by zooarchaeologists and archaeobotanists; and scientific techniques, newly applied to the medieval period, are opening up possibilities for understanding the cumulative effects of diet on the skeleton. In a multi-disciplinary approach to the subject, this volume, written by leading experts in different fields, unites analysis of the historical, archaeological, and scientific record to provide an up-to-date synthesis. The volume covers the whole of the middle ages from the early Saxon period up to c .1540, and while the focus is on England wider European developments are not ignored.

The first aim of the book is to establish how much more is now known about patterns of diet, nutrition, and the use of food in display and social competition; its second is to promote interchange between the methodological approaches of historians and archaeologists. The text brings together much original research, marrying historical and archaeological approaches with analysis from a range of archaeological disciplines, including archaeobotany, archaeozoology, osteoarchaeology, and isotopic studies.

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Publisher's Notes:
New light is shed on everyday life in the Middle Ages in Great Britain and continental Europe through this unique survey of its food culture. Students and other readers will learn about the common foodstuffs available, how and what they cooked, ate, and drank, what the regional cuisines were like, how the different classes entertained and celebrated, and what restrictions they followed for health and faith reasons. Fascinating information is provided, such as on imitation food, kitchen humor, and medical ideas. Many period recipes and quotations flesh out the narrative.

The book draws on a variety of period sources, including as literature, account books, cookbooks, religious texts, archaeology, and art. Food was a status symbol then, and sumptuary laws defined what a person of a certain class could eat—the ingredients and preparation of a dish and how it was eaten depended on a person's status, and most information is available on the upper crust rather than the masses. Equalizing factors might have been religious strictures and such diseases as the bubonic plague, all of which are detailed here.

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Publisher's Notes:
The enormous interest in recent years in the role of food in history has inspired this scholarly and entertaining collection of ten newly commissioned articles by medievalists from North America, Europe, and Australia that examines the subject of medieval food from a variety of disciplines including English, French, and German literature, history, and history of medicine. Up to now, there had been no such collection of in-depth, cross-cultural studies on medieval food in a variety of culinary, literary, and religious texts. An introduction and subject index are provided.

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Publisher's Notes:
With people's fascination for food increasing, there are more cookery shows and magazines than ever, Medieval banquets are sold-out events and classic recipes and ingredients are back in fashion, which is what this book sets out to explore. Highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of each era from Roman times onwards. Anna recreates classic recipes from Epicurius' stuffed dormice to recipes which readers really will want to recreate. Anna explores how trade and improved transportation increased foodstuffs available and reflects on how we're returning to the old-fashioned notion of seasonal foods - just like our ancestors had to do.

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Publisher's Notes:
Published in 1651, this revolutionary recipe book represents a move away from peasant traditions, and lays the foundations of classic French cuisine. La Varenne's was the first recipe book to receive international acclaim, and influenced European cookery for many centuries to come. Little is known of La Varenne's life, or if he was responsible for the considerable innovations that appear in his books, but he was certainly the first to write them down. They include recipes for omelettes, ragouts, bisques and caramel, new ways of spicing and flavouring dishes, many new technical terms and such as a la mode, au bleu, and au naturel, and countless other ideas that had not been known before and have now become part of our repertoire. Introduction by Philip and Mary Hyman, whose knowledge of Varenne is unrivalled.

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Publisher's Notes:
This is a new edition of a classic of early 17th-century food writing. The book was written by the Italian refugee, educator, and humanist Giacomo Castelvetro, who had been saved from the clutches of the Inquisition in Venice by the English ambassador, Sir Dudley Carleton, in 1611. When he came to England, he was horrified by its preference for large helpings of meat, masses of sugar and very little greenstuff. The Italians were good gardeners, and had a familiarity with many varieties of vegetable and fruit that were as yet little-known in England. He circulated his Italian manuscript among his supporters, dedicating it to Lucy, Countess of Bedford, herself a keen gardener and patron of literature. Gillian Riley's translation of this hitherto unpublished document has been recognised as being fluent, entertaining and accurate from its first appearance in 1989. Castelvetro takes us through the gardener's year, listing the fruit and vegetables as they come into season, with simple and elegant ways of preparing them. Practical instructions are interspersed with tender vignettes of his life in his native city of Modena, memories of his years in Venice, and reminiscences of his travels in Europe. He writes of children learning to swim in the canals of the Brenta, strapped to huge dried pumpkins to keep them afloat; Venetian ladies ogling passers-by from behind screens of verdant beanstalks; sultry German wenches jealously hoarding their grape harvest; his intimate chats with Scandinavian royalty about the best way to graft pear cuttings and discomfort the Pope. At the time of Castelvetro's writing, English cooking was on a cusp. It had yet to absorb the new ways of Europe, although some of the best practice of Dutch and French gardening was having its effect on our diet. But there were still many new styles of cooking and recipes to absorb, as well as new plants to enjoy (for instance broccoli), and new ways to set them out on the table. This treatise anticipates many of the changes that were to come about over the next one hundred years. Castelvetro urged the English to eat more salads with the same enthusiasm evinced by John Evelyn in his 1699 book on salad-stuff.

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NOTE: This edition does not contain the full text of the original. The editor states in her introduction that she removed unnecessary punctuation, changed the order of the recipes, and removed some recipes that were duplicated within the original. These edits significantly reduce the value of this source for serious research. I include the book on this list only because it appears to be the only edition of "Good Housewife's Jewel" currently in print, and therefore is better than nothing.

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Publisher's Notes:
The Goodman of Paris (Le Ménagier de Paris) wrote this book for the instruction of his young wife around 1393. He was a wealthy and learned man, a member of that enlightened haute bourgeoisie upon which the French monarchy was coming to lean with increasing confidence. When he wrote his Treatise he was at least sixty but had recently married a young wife some forty years his junior. It fell to her to make his declining years comfortable, but it was his task to make it easy for her to do so. The first part deals with her religious and moral duties: as well as giving a unique picture of the medieval view of wifely behaviour it is illustrated by a series of stories drawn from the Goodman's extensive reading and personal experience. In the second part he turns from theory to practice and from soul to body, compiling the most exhaustive treatise on household management which has come down to us from the middle ages. Gardening, hiring of servants, the purchase and preparation of food are all covered, culminating in a detailed and elaborate cookery book. Sadly the author died before he could complete the third section on hawking, games and riddles. This unique glimpse of medieval domestic life presents a worldly, dignified and compelling picture in the words of a man of sensibility and substance. The distinguished historian EILEEN POWER was Professor of Economic History at the University of Cambridge.

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Publisher's Notes:
In the closing years of the fourteenth century, an anonymous French writer compiled a book addressed to a fifteen-year-old bride, narrated in the voice of her husband, a wealthy, aging Parisian. The book was designed to teach this young wife the moral attributes, duties, and conduct befitting a woman of her station in society, in the almost certain event of her widowhood and subsequent remarriage. The work also provides a rich assembly of practical materials for the wife's use and for her household, including treatises on gardening and shopping, tips on choosing servants, directions on the medical care of horses and the training of hawks, plus menus for elaborate feasts, and more than 380 recipes.

The Good Wife's Guide is the first complete modern English translation of this important medieval text also known as Le Ménagier de Paris (the Parisian household book), a work long recognized for its unique insights into the domestic life of the bourgeoisie during the later Middle Ages. The Good Wife's Guide, expertly rendered into modern English by Gina L. Greco and Christine M. Rose, is accompanied by an informative critical introduction setting the work in its proper medieval context as a conduct manual. This edition presents the book in its entirety, as it must have existed for its earliest readers. The Guide is now a treasure for the classroom, appealing to anyone studying medieval literature or history or considering the complex lives of medieval women. It illuminates the milieu and composition process of medieval authors and will in turn fascinate cooking or horticulture enthusiasts. The work illustrates how a (perhaps fictional) Parisian householder of the late fourteenth century might well have trained his wife so that her behavior could reflect honorably on him and enhance his reputation.

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Publisher's Notes:
In the later medieval centuries, a whole range of important social, political, and artistic activities took place against the backdrop of the great English households. In this lively book, C. M. Woolgar explores the fascinating details of life in a great house. Based on extensive investigation of household accounts and related primary documents, Woolgar vividly illuminates the operations of great households. He also delineates the major changes that transformed the economy and geography of both lay and clerical households between 1200 and 1500.

In this portrait of aristocratic and gentry life in medieval England, Woolgar describes the roles of family members, the situations of servants, the uses of space within the household, food and drink for daily consumption and for special occasions, furnishing, clothing, arrangements for travel, household animals, cleanliness and hygiene, entertainment, the practices of religion, and intellectual life. The author also analyzes the qualitative and social evolution of great households as definitions of magnificence and conventions of etiquette became increasingly elaborate.

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Publisher's Notes:
Wormwood Cakes, Quodling Pie, Sosenga, Hennys en bruet ...

Do you like to read old cookbooks and perhaps even yearn to cook some of the recipes, with their enticing names?

"A Hastiness of Cooks" takes you step-by-step through the process of recreating recipes like these for the modern table. By the time you reach the end of the book, you’ll be able to:

Analyze the subtext of historical cookbooks, regardless of their culinary patrimony and time period•Decipher archaic language

Choose the correct equipment and ingredients

Cook with a wood fire on a hearth or three stones on the ground

Research historical accuracy with various print and online resources

And much more.

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Publisher's Notes:
A book on medieval and renaissance cooking including more than 330 recipes, articles on how to do a feast, information on what ingredients were available when, and more.

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Publisher's Notes:
In international culinary history, Germany is still largely a blank space, its unparalleled wealth of source material and large body of published research available only to readers of German. This books aims to give everybody else an overview of German foodways at a crucial juncture in its history. The Reformation era, broadly speaking from the Imperial Reforms of the 1480s to the beginning of the Thirty Years’ War, laid the foundations for many developments in German culture, language, and history, not least the notion of its existence as a country. Understanding the food traditions and habits of the time is important to anyone studying Germany’s culinary history and identity.

Using original source material, food production, processing and consumption are explored with a view to the social significance of food and the practicalities of feeding a growing population. Food habits across the social spectrum are presented, looking at the foodways of rich and poor in city and country. The study shows a foodscape richly differentiated by region, class, income, gender and religion, but united by a shared culinary identity that was just beginning to emerge. An appendix of recipes helps the reader gain an appreciation of the practical aspects of food in the age of Martin Luther.

Reviews:
by Daniel Myers for "MedievalCookery.com"

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Publisher's Notes:
The collection of medieval culinary recipes here published dates from the early thirteenth century and is likely to be the earliest witness we have to a number of recipes that appear again and again in later medieval collections. This critical edition of thirty-five recipes from four Danish, Icelandic, and Low German manuscripts records culinary themes that were to flourish throughout the later Middle Ages and is a major contribution to the literature on food. The volume includes translations, textual notes, a commentary, and detailed indices covering utensils, procedures, ingredients, dishes, and a glossary for each of the three languages.

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Publisher's Notes:
A richly detailed account of the culinary world of fourteenth-century Paris. At the centre of this account lies the Ménagier de Paris, a medieval manuscript covering all aspects of food preparation and household skills, written by a well-to-do knight for his fifteen-year-old wife. Through her meticulous study of the manuscript, Nicole Crossley-Holland paints a vivid picture of life in the knight's household: his city residence with its walled vegetable and herb garden; his home farm which provided meat and dairy produce; the country estate where he trained sparrowhawks and hunted wild boar.

The author gives a comprehensive description of medieval food economy. Methods of food preservation, cooking techniques, recipes and presentation are thoroughly explored. Menus, ranging from the simple and everyday to elaborate wedding feasts, are described in detail.

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Publisher's Notes:
This book takes us into the world of the medieval cook, from the chefs in the great medieval courts and aristocratic households catering for huge feasts, to the peasant wife attempting to feed her family from scarce resources, from cooking at street stalls to working as hired caterers for private functions. It shows how they were presented in the art, literature and moral commentary of the period (valued on some grounds, despised on others), how they functioned, and how they coped with the limitations and the expectations which faced them in different social settings. Particular use is made of their frequent appearance in the margins of illuminated manuscript, whether as decoration, or as a teaching tool.

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Publisher's Notes:
The Medieval Kitchen is a delightful work in which historians Odile Redon, Françoise Sabban, and Silvano Serventi rescue from dark obscurity the glorious cuisine of the Middle Ages. Medieval gastronomy turns out to have been superb - a wonderful mélange of flavor, aroma, and color. Expertly reconstructed from fourteenth- and fifteenth-century sources and carefully adapted to suit the modern kitchen, these recipes present a veritable feast. The Medieval Kitchen vividly depicts the context and tradition of authentic medieval cookery.

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Publisher's Notes:
Contrary to what is often believed, good food was valued highly in the Middle Ages – the fragrance of exotic spices filled the air, meat turned on the spit and fish was consumed in abundance for religious reasons. The wealthy made a show of their prosperity by serving peacock or wild boar at banquets, while the poor ate vegetables, porridge and bread. Fresh and preserved fish, meat, fruit and vegetables were transported great distances to grace dining tables across Europe.

In The Medieval Kitchen, Hannele Klemettilä presents a richly illustrated history of medieval food and cookery in Western Europe and Scandinavia. The book is also a practicable cookbook, with a collection of more than 60 originally sourced recipes that can easily be prepared in today’s modern home. Hippocras, roasted veal paupiettes with bacon and herbs, and rose pudding tempt with the beguiling flavours of a bygone era.

The Medieval Kitchen corrects many common misconceptions about the food of the Middle Ages, and acquaints the reader with the food culture, customs and ideologies associated with eating in medieval times. The text is accompanied by many fine paintings and drawings, which help to evoke the atmosphere in the dining rooms and kitchens of both rich and poor some 600 years ago.

Hannele Klemettilä is a postdoctoral researcher of the Academy of Finland and a specialist in medieval cultural history. Her publications include monographs, books, articles and newspaper columns, and she has appeared on radio and television.

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Publisher's Notes:
This book takes the reader on a gastronomic journey through the Middle Ages, offering not only a collection of medieval recipes, but a social history of the time. The eighty recipes, drawn from the earliest English cookbooks of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, are presented in two formats: the original Middle English version and one adapted and tested for the modern cook.

In a fascinating introduction, the author describes the range of available ingredients in medieval times and the meals that could be prepared from them—from simple daily snacks to celebratory feasts—as well as the preparation of the table, prescribed dining etiquette, and the various entertainments that accompanied elite banquets. Each chapter presents a series of recipes inspired by a historical event, a piece of literature, or a social occasion. Here we find descriptions of the grilled meats consumed by William the Conqueror's invading forces; the pies and puddings enjoyed by the pilgrims in Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales; and the more sumptuous fare served at royal feasts and Christmas celebrations.

Beautifully illustrated with lively dining scenes from illuminated manuscripts and tapestries, this book serves up a delightful literary and visual repast for anyone interested in the history of food and dining.

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Publisher's Notes:
The Livre fort excellent de cuysine is one of a family of cookery books that first saw the light with Pierre Sergent’s La Fleur de toute cuysine (renamed Le Grand cuisinier de toute cuisine) of 1542. This edition of the Livre fort excellent was published in 1555. Scholars have often dismissed the printed cookbooks of 16th-century France as simple rehashes of the great medieval Viandier of Taillevent or as merely concentrating on marginal dishes such as sweets and sugarwork. True French cooking, they say, did not start until the publication of Le Cuisinier françois by La Varenne in 1651. While there is some truth in this, the translators and editors of this book would maintain that the change from medieval to modern (already under way in Italy and Spain for example) can be dated back to this book and its kindred; that it was more than a plagiaristic copy.

The Livre fort comprises about 70 pages of original French, with an English translation on facing pages. The translation is the work of Timothy J. Tomasik, Associate Professor of French, Valparaiso University, Indiana; an historical introduction discussing the culinary significance of the work is by Ken Albala, Professor of History at the University of the Pacific, Stockton, California. Professor Tomasik has translated other contemporary gastronomic texts and has written many articles on the French table in the Renaissance, and co-edited the volume At the Table: Metaphorical and Material Cultures of Food in Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Professor Albala is the author of Eating Right in the Renaissance and a leading light in historical food studies here and in America. He is editor of the journal Food, Culture and Society.

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Publisher's Notes:
The fields of cookery and medieval food have recently drawn the attention of those interested in a panoramic picture of aristocratic and bourgeois social life in the late Middle Ages. In the fifteenth century, wealthy courts in the Italian peninsula led all of Europe in gastronomical achievement. The professional cooks in palaces such as those of the Este, Medici, and Borgia families were the most advanced masters of their craft, and some of them bequeathed a record of their practice in manuscript collections of recipes.

Outstanding among these early cookbooks is the one written by an anonymous master cook in Naples toward the end of the century. In its 220 recipes, we can trace not only the Italian culinary practice of the day but also the very refined taste brought by the Catalan royal family when they ruled Naples. This edition--with its introduction touching on the nature of cookery in the Neapolitano Collection, and its commentary on the individual recipes and its English translation of those recipes--will give the reader a glimpse into the rich fare available to occupants and guests of one of the greatest houses of late medieval Italy.

The Neapolitan Recipe Collection offers a particularly delicious slice of the primary documentation necessary for understanding the nature of medieval society and one of its most important aspects.

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Publisher's Notes:
Bartolomeo Scappi (c. 1500-1577) was arguably the most famous chef of the Italian Renaissance. He oversaw the preparation of meals for several Cardinals and was such a master of his profession that he became the personal cook for two Popes. At the culmination of his prolific career he compiled the largest cookery treatise of the period to instruct an apprentice on the full craft of fine cuisine, its methods, ingredients, and recipes. Accompanying his book was a set of unique and precious engravings that show the ideal kitchen of his day, its operations and myriad utensils, and are exquisitely reproduced in this volume.

Scappi's Opera presents more than one thousand recipes along with menus that comprise up to a hundred dishes, while also commenting on a cook's responsibilities. Scappi also included a fascinating account of a pope's funeral and the complex procedures for feeding the cardinals during the ensuing conclave. His recipes inherit medieval culinary customs, but also anticipate modern Italian cookery with a segment of 230 recipes for pastry of plain and flaky dough (torte, ciambelle, pastizzi, crostate) and pasta (tortellini, tagliatelli, struffoli, ravioli, pizza).

Terence Scully presents the first English translation of the work. His aim is to make the recipes and the broad experience of this sophisticated papal cook accessible to a modern English audience interested in the culinary expertise and gastronomic refinement within the most civilized niche of Renaissance society.

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Publisher's Notes:
The original of A Proper Newe Booke of Cokerye is in the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, and was donated by Matthew Parker, the fourteenth Master, who later became Archbishop of Canterbury. The book is thought to have been used by his wife Margaret.

Anne Ahmed, the wife of the present Master, has prepared this new edition of the book for the 650th anniversary celebrations of the College.

The original recipes are presented in facsimile alongside an interpretation. Updated versions of some of these recipes are included to encourage readers to try for themselves Margaret Parker's dishes from a bygone age.

This hardback book of 112 pages is delightfully illustrated and includes a brief introduction to the life and times of Matthew and Margaret Parker.

Reviews:
by Johnna Holloway for "Serve It Forth!"

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Publisher's Notes:
John Crophill’s Commonplace Book is a collection of texts on astrology, alchemy, cooking, and medicine assembled in the late fifteenth century. This book contains a transcription of the 69 culinary recipes in the original Middle English, along with notes and related recipes from other contemporary sources.

[Note that the recipes in this work are included in the Medieval Cookbook Search and the full text appears in serialized form on the The Medieval Cookery Blog. Any purchase of this print edition helps support this website]

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Publisher's Notes:
The Wagstaff Miscellany is a collection of recipes, poems, and other texts written sometime in the fifteenth century. This book contains a transcription of the 189 culinary recipes from the miscellany in the original Middle English, along with notes and related recipes from other contemporary sources.

[Note that the recipes in this work are included in the Medieval Cookbook Search and the full text appears in serialized form on the The Medieval Cookery Blog. Any purchase of this print edition helps support this website]

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Publisher's Notes:
Written in the 15th century by the German ecclesiastic Johannes Bockenheim, cook under Pope Martin V, the Registrum Coquine is one of the most interesting and funny medieval cookbooks.In the text, collected into two manuscripts, we find more than 80 recipes for prostitutes and actors, princes and peasants, pimps and priests, kings and mercenaries, in a colorful representation of the complexity of medieval society, more layered and rich than we commonly imagine. A fascinating world made of spices, flavors, preparations forgotten through time and worth to be discovered again, theoretically and practically in our kitchens. From Marco Gavio de Rubeis, author of Ancient Roman Cooking. Ingredients, Recipes, Sources, a new book dedicated to the Registrum Coquine, with a translation with notes about the recipes and the differences between the manuscripts, in addition to an introduction about foods and ingredients across the social classes in the Middle Ages and a glossary of the terms used by Bockenheim, quite different from classical Latin and frequently more similar to the vernaculars spoken in Italy.

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Publisher's Notes:
Contemporary concerns about food such as those stemming from mad cow disease, salmonella, and other potential food-related dangers are hardly new-humans have long been wary of what they eat. Beyond the fundamental fear of hunger, societies have sought to protect themselves from rotten, impure, or unhealthy food. From the markets of medieval Europe to the slaughterhouses of twentieth-century Chicago, Madeleine Ferrières traces the origins of present-day behavior toward what we eat as she explores the panics, myths, and ever-shifting attitudes regarding food and its safety. She demonstrates that food fears have been inspired not only by safety concerns but also by cultural, political, and religious prejudices.

Flour from human bones and pâté from dead cats are just two of the more unappetizing recipes that have scared consumers away from certain foods. Ferrières considers the roots of these and other rumors, illuminating how societies have assessed and attempted to regulate the risks of eating. She documents the bizarre and commonsensical attempts by European towns to ensure the quality of beef and pork, ranging from tighter controls on butchers to prohibiting Jews and menstruating women from handling meat. Examining the spread of Hungarian cattle disease, which ravaged the livestock of seventeenth-century Europe, Ferrières recounts the development of safety methods that became the Western model for fighting animal diseases.

Ferrières discusses a wealth of crucial and curious food-related incidents, trends, and beliefs, including European explorers' shocked responses to the foodways of the New World; how some foods deemed unsafe for the rich were seen as perfectly suitable for the poor; the potato's negative reputation; the fierce legal battles between seventeenth-century French bread bakers and innkeepers; the role of the medical profession in food regulation; and how modern consumerism changed the way we eat. Drawing on history, folklore, agriculture, and anthropology, Ferrières tells us how our decisions about what not to eat reflect who we are.

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Publisher's Notes:
This popular 13th-century Syrian cookbook is an ode to what its anonymous author calls the “greater part of the pleasure of this life,” namely the consumption of food and drink, as well as the fragrances that garnish the meals and the diners who enjoy them. Collecting 635 meticulous recipes, Scents and Flavors invites us to savor an inventive cuisine that elevates simple ingredients by combining the sundry aromas of herbs, spices, fruits, and flower essences.

Organized like a meal, it opens with appetizers and juices and proceeds through main courses, side dishes, and desserts, including such confections as candies based on the higher densities of sugar syrup—an innovation unique to the medieval Arab world. Apricot beverages, stuffed eggplant, pistachio chicken, coriander stew, melon crepes, and almond pudding are seasoned with nutmeg, rose, cloves, saffron, and the occasional rare ingredient like ambergris to delight and surprise the banqueter. Bookended by chapters on preparatory perfumes, incenses, medicinal oils, antiperspirant powders, and after-meal hand soaps, this comprehensive culinary journey is a feast for all the senses.

With the exception of four extant Babylonian and Roman specimens, cookbooks did not appear on the world literary scene until Arabic speakers began compiling their recipe collections in the tenth century, peaking in popularity in the thirteenth century. Scents and Flavors quickly became a bestseller during this golden age of cookbooks, and remains today a delectable read for epicures and cultural historians alike.

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Publisher's Notes:
Shakespeare's working life, from about 1590 to 1615, was not only a period of rich activity on the London stage, but also one of prolific writing and publishing about food. Shakespeare himself used food in many of his plays: from memorable banquet scenes, to the use of food and feasting as metaphor. This fascinating book explores the plays alongside contemporary recipes to offer modern‐day cooks a unique insight into daily life and gastronomy in Shakespeare's London.

A beautifully illustrated cookbook revealing what people were really eating in Shakespeare's time, featuring fifty original menus and recipes from 16th‐ and 17th‐century cookbooks, alongside food‐related quotes from Shakespeare's canon. Including fully‐tested modern day adaptations of all fifty recipes, this is an excellent resource for all those interested in history, cookery, literature and a wider approach to the world of Shakespeare.

The authors: Andrew Dalby is a classics scholar, linguist and food historian. Maureen Dalby is a retired teacher and a cook.

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Publisher's Notes:
The Spice Route is one of history's greatest anomalies: shrouded in mystery, it existed long before anyone knew of its extent or configuration. Spices came from lands unseen, possibly uninhabitable, and almost by definition unattainable; that was what made them so desirable. Yet more livelihoods depended on this pungent traffic, more nations participated in it, more wars were fought for it, and more discoveries resulted from it than from any other global exchange. Epic in scope, marvelously detailed, laced with drama, The Spice Route spans three millennia and circles the world to chronicle the history of the spice trade. With the aid of ancient geographies, travelers' accounts, mariners' handbooks, and ships' logs, John Keay tells of ancient Egyptians who pioneered maritime trade to fetch the incense of Arabia, Graeco-Roman navigators who found their way to India for pepper and ginger, Columbus who sailed west for spices, de Gama, who sailed east for them, and Magellan, who sailed across the Pacific on the exact same quest. A veritable spice race evolved as the west vied for control of the spice-producing islands, stripping them of their innocence and the spice trade of its mystique. This enthralling saga, progressing from the voyages of the ancients to the blue-water trade that came to prevail by the seventeenth century, transports us from the dawn of history to the ends of the earth.

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Publisher's Notes:
Throughout a long academic career in Holland, Johanna Maria van Winter has specialized in the study of food and drink in the Middle Ages. She has contributed several papers to learned journals and specialist conferences are gathered here within a single volume. The papers are printed for the most part in English but with some German and French texts.

The subjects break down into four groups: Medieval Food Habits; The Netherlands and their Neighbours; Fasting and Feasting; Food and Health. Invariably the work is founded on a close study of written sources, either the medieval records of towns and feudal lords of The Netherlands, early printed cookery books, or the best international scholarship.

Some of the topics discussed in this volume are: Fasting and asceticism in the Middle Ages; Fish recipes in late medieval and early modern cookery books; The use of cannabis in two cookery books of the fifteenth century; Green salads in the Renaissance; Invalid food in the fifteenth century; Regional cookery of the Low Countries in the later Middle Ages; Festive meals; Dining as a means of communication; The role of preserved food in Dutch medieval households.

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Publisher's Notes:
The original recipes are translated by the author from Harleian MS. 279, Harleian MS. 4016, and Extracts of Ashmole MS. 1439, Laud MS. 553, and Douce MS. 55. They are reprinted by permission of the Council of the Early English Text Society. Take a Thousand Eggs or More features over 400 15th century recipes. These are presented in transcription with simultaneous Modern English translations. Over 120 of the recipes have been modernized and are easy to prepare and delicious. Sample medieval feast menus have been included. Also features: Two Glossaries. Bibliography. An expanded how-to section. All lavishly illustrated with period woodcuts. Fully indexed.

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Publisher's Notes:
The Tasting History with Max Miller channel has thrilled food enthusiasts and history buffs alike as Miller recreates a dish from the past, often using historical recipes from vintage texts, but updated for modern kitchens as he tells stories behind the cuisine and culture. From ancient Rome to Ming China to medieval Europe and beyond, Miller has collected the best-loved recipes from around the world and has shared them with his fans. Now, with beautiful photographs portraying the dishes and historical artwork throughout, Tasting History compiles over sixty dishes such as:
-Tuh'u: a red beet stew with leeks dating back to 1740 BC
-Globi: deep-fried cheese balls with honey and poppy seeds
-Soul Cakes: yeasted buns with currants from circa 1600
-Pumpkin Tourte: a crustless pumpkin cheesecake with cinnamon and sugar on top from 1570
-And much more.

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From the Author's Website:

The Taste of Conquest tells the story of the legendary players in this global tale: of the ruthless merchants of Venice, of the conquistadors of Lisbon, and the single-minded businessmen of Amsterdam. It's a story about food, greed fashion and conquest.

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Publisher's Notes:
This is an excellent effort by the author in translating the cookbook entitled Kanz al-fawāʾid fī tanwīʿ al-mawāʾid. The author of the original 14th century Egyptian manuscript is unknown. It consists of 830 recipes for a variety of different dishes and beverages. Thanks to the author Nawal Nasrallah, it has been translated for the first time in English and is available on different platforms for purchase. The book contains an introduction, a glossary and descriptive recipes with some modern adaptations of some classical dishes.

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Publisher's Notes:
This is an EXACT reproduction of a book published before 1923. This IS NOT an OCR'd book with strange characters, introduced typographical errors, and jumbled words. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.

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Publisher's Notes:
These three books by François Pierre de la Varenne (c. 1615-1678), who was chef to the Marquis d'Uxelles, are the most important French cookery books of the seventeenth century. It was the first French cookery book of any substance since Le Viandier almost 300 years before, and it ran to thirty editions in 75 years. The reason for its success was simply; it was the first book to record and embody the immense advances which French cooking had made, largely under the influence Italy and the Renaissance, since the fifteenth century. Some characteristics of medieval cookery are still visible, but many have disappeared. New World ingredients make their entrance. A surprising number of recipes for dishes still made in modern times (omelettes, beignets, even pumpkin pie) are given. The watershed from medieval to modern times is being crossed under our eyes in La Varenne's pages.

So important was this book that English cooks of the time immediately bought copies and one (anonymous) even translated it into English in the middle of the Puritan rule of Oliver Cromwell. This translation, as is the original, is extremely difficult to understand: there are difficult words, omissions, mistranslations, and other opacities. Terence Scully has solved all modern readers' problems by undertaking a modern translation with detailed commentary of the original French texts. His work takes cognisance of the early English translation, as well as not ignoring contemporary works available to those early cooks for purposes of comparison and contrast. Even French people will want to buy it for what he tells us of the workings of the French kitchen in the seventeenth century.

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Publisher's Notes:
This volume presents, for the first time, all four extant manuscripts of the "Viandier"'s recipes written in the fourteenth century by Guillaume Tairel. These manuscripts represent more than a century of modifications in gastronomic tastes and culinary practices in French seigneurial life. Also included are an extensive commentary, notes and bibliography as well as a glossary and modern adaptations of five recipes.

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Publisher's Notes:
The Vivendier is a hitherto unpublished manuscript of more than sixty recipes embedded within a miscellany of medical, botanical, household and personal advice compiled in north-eastern France in the middle of the

fifteenth century. It is now housed in the Gesamthochschul-Bibliothek in Kassel. Although deriving much of its contents from sources already known to us, it is a unique and instructive collection. Terence Scully, who has already edited the Viandier of Taillevent, and the treatise on cookery by Maistre Chiquart, as well as writing the important book The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages, has done great service to scholars and enthusiasts of medieval cooking by bringing this new source to their attention. The edition provides the original text, a modern translation, critical notes on the language as well as the cookery, comparisons with extant manuscripts that provided source material, and a full introduction.