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'This is an important and authoritative book' Constance B. Hieatt. 'A source of enlightenment and delight' Gastronomica.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
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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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
What a wonderful book! P. Brears knowledge of the medieval world is amazing. This is not "just" a cooking book....though I bought it just because I was looking for a good medieval cooking book. This is a history of cooking in medieval England. Of cooking, dining, living and of all the practical things of cooking and living in the Middle Ages, in the castles and country houses....with such an incredibly amount of details.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Not too high brow for the everyday reader to pick up, but still highly detailed and informative.
I've not tried out any of the recipies yet, but even without any of these I would consider it an essential book for medieval re-enactors and anyone with an interest in the period, particularly in aspects of architecture and cooking.
If you like castles, and thinking about how they actually worked when intact, this book will give you food for thought (excuse the pun!). There are numerous diagrams showing how the various kitchens / ovens / and other rooms in a castle fitted and worked together - for many specific castles in the UK. Look around your favourite again after reading this book and you will see it in a completely different light.
I have read the book right through initially, and envisage dipping in and out in future when I want to recreate something specific, visit a particular site or just top up my knowledge.
Definitely one to keep on the bookshelf, or even closer to hand.
I've not tried out any of the recipies yet, but even without any of these I would consider it an essential book for medieval re-enactors and anyone with an interest in the period, particularly in aspects of architecture and cooking.
If you like castles, and thinking about how they actually worked when intact, this book will give you food for thought (excuse the pun!). There are numerous diagrams showing how the various kitchens / ovens / and other rooms in a castle fitted and worked together - for many specific castles in the UK. Look around your favourite again after reading this book and you will see it in a completely different light.
I have read the book right through initially, and envisage dipping in and out in future when I want to recreate something specific, visit a particular site or just top up my knowledge.
Definitely one to keep on the bookshelf, or even closer to hand.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This book has a wealth of detail in this book covering the end to end of food in a well-off household in the mediaeval period (and applicable to the Tudor/Stuart period also): organisation structure, accounting, procurement, cooking (by department) and serving. And lots of practical receipes also.
The comment on re-enactor's "pottage" at the start of one chapter was a bit harsh (but fair).
My only slight quibble is there are a few key facts left unexplained, and unreferenced in the notes/biblio. For example, "on fish days, dinner was often 1 hour later". Why? Source? We need to know!
The comment on re-enactor's "pottage" at the start of one chapter was a bit harsh (but fair).
My only slight quibble is there are a few key facts left unexplained, and unreferenced in the notes/biblio. For example, "on fish days, dinner was often 1 hour later". Why? Source? We need to know!
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