Medieval Cooking In Todays Kitchen

"Contains 78 recipes ... that originate from the folkloric foundations of individual cultures throughout Europe and the [British] Isles in the Middle Ages ... Each dish has been researched, translated, prepared by time-honred cooking traditions, and is suitable for modern chefs everywhere ... these recipes offer historical information, preparation suggestions and a thorough resource guide"--Publisher's description.

We don’t usually think of haute cuisine when we think of the Middle Ages. But while the poor did eat a lot of vegetables, porridge, and bread, the medieval palate was far more diverse than commonly assumed. Meat, including beef, mutton, deer, and rabbit, turned on spits over crackling fires, and the rich showed off their prosperity by serving peacock and wild boar at banquets. Fish was consumed in abundance, especially during religious periods such as Lent, and the air was redolent with exotic spices like cinnamon and pepper that came all the way from the Far East. In this richly illustrated history, Hannele Klemettilä corrects common misconceptions about the food of the Middle Ages, acquainting the reader not only with the food culture but also the customs and ideologies associated with eating in medieval times. Fish, meat, fruit, and vegetables traveled great distances to appear on dinner tables across Europe, and Klemettillä takes us into the medieval kitchens of Western Europe and Scandinavia to describe the methods and utensils used to prepare and preserve this well-traveled food. The Medieval Kitchen also contains more than sixty original recipes for enticing fare like roasted veal paupiettes with bacon and herbs, rose pudding, and spiced wine. Evoking the dining rooms and kitchens of Europe some six hundred years ago, The Medieval Kitchen will tempt anyone with a taste for the food, customs, and folklore of times long past.

In this fascinating study, the author examines both the theory and practice of medieval cooking. The recipes which survived indicate how rich and varied a choice of dishes the wealthy could enjoy.

This is a completely revised edition of the classic cookbook that makes genuine medieval meals available to modern cooks. Using the best recipes from the first edition as a base, Constance Hieatt and Brenda Hosington have added many new recipes from more countries to add depth and flavour to our understanding of medieval cookery. All recipes have been carefully adapted for use in modern kitchens, thoroughly tested, and represent a wide range of foods, from appetizers and soups, to desserts and spice wine. They come largely from English and French manuscripts, but some recipes are from sources in Arabia, Catalonia and Italy. The recipes will appeal to cordon-bleus and less experienced cooks, and feature dishes for both bold and timourous palates. The approach to cooking is entirely practical. The emphasis of the book is on making medieval cookery accessible by enabling today's cooks to produce authentic medieval dishes with as much fidelity as possible. All the ingredients are readily available; where some might prove difficult to find, suitable substitutes are suggested. While modern ingredients which did not exist in the Middle Ages have been excluded (corn starch, for example), modern time and energy saving appliances have not. Authenticity of composition, taste, and appearance are the book's main concern. Unlike any other published book of medieval recipes, Pleyn Delit is based on manuscript readings verified by the authors. When this was not possible, as in the case of the Arabic recipes, the best available scholarly editions were used. The introduction provides a clear explanation of the medieval menu and related matters to bring the latest medieval scholarship to the kitchen of any home. Pleyn Delit is a recipe book dedicated to pure delight - a delight in cooking and good food.

"Explores the cuisine of the Middle Ages within its historical context, examining its relationship with religion and with different classes of society. Includes recipes drawn from medieval manuscripts and adapts recipes for modern cooking"--

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. "This book is a delight. It is not often that one has the privilege of working from a text this detailed and easy to use. It is living history, able to be practiced by novice and master alike, practical history which can be carried out in our own homes by those of us living in modern times."—Wanda Oram Miles, The Medieval Review "The Medieval Kitchen, like other classic cookbooks, makes compulsive reading as well as providing a practical collection of recipes."—Heather O'Donoghue, Times Literary Supplement

"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 experton 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.

“Shakespeare’s Kitchen not only reveals, sometimes surprisingly, what people were eating in Shakespeare’s time but also provides recipes that today’s cooks can easily re-create with readily available ingredients.” —from the Foreword by Patrick O’Connell Francine Segan introduces contemporary cooks to the foods of William Shakespeare’ s world with recipes updated from classic sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cookbooks. Her easy-to-prepare adaptations shatter the myth that the Bard’s primary fare was boiled mutton. In fact, Shakespeare and his contemporaries dined on salads of fresh herbs and vegetables; fish, fowl, and meats of all kinds; and delicate broths. Dried Plums with Wine and Ginger-Zest Crostini, Winter Salad with Raisin and Caper Vinaigrette, and Lobster with Pistachio Stuffing and Seville Orange Butter are just a few of the delicious, aromatic, and gorgeous dishes that will surprise and delight. Segan’s delicate and careful renditions of these recipes have been thoroughly tested to ensure no-fail, standout results. The tantalizing Renaissance recipes in Shakespeare’s Kitchen are enhanced with food-related quotes from the Bard, delightful morsels of culinary history, interesting facts on the customs and social etiquette of Shakespeare’ s time, and the texts of the original recipes, complete with antiquated spellings and eccentric directions. Patrick O’Connell provides an enticing Foreword to this edible history from which food lovers and Shakespeare enthusiasts alike will derive nourishment. Want something new for dinner? Try something four hundred years old. NOTE: This edition does not include photos.

Drawing on the cuisine of the Middle Ages, from the fall of the Roman Empire to Henry VIII's break with Rome, this new treatment of a classic book explores the relationship between food, religion and the ever-widening gap between the tables of the rich and the poor. Featured is an appetizing collection of recipes inspired by medieval manuscripts, richly illustrated throughout with stunning scenes of food, feasting and cooking from paintings, tapestries and drawings. The Medieval Cookbook has been thoughtfully adapted for the modern kitchen, whilst retaining the true essence of dining in medieval Britain.

The modern twenty-first century kitchen has an array of time saving equipment for preparing a meal: a state of the art stove and refrigerator, a microwave oven, a food processor, a blender and a variety of topnotch pots, pans and utensils. We take so much for granted as we prepare the modern meal – not just in terms of equipment, but also the ingredients, without needing to worry about availability or seasonality. We cook with gas or electricity – at the turn of the switch we have instant heat. But it wasn’t always so. Just step back a few centuries to say the 1300s and we’d find quite a different kitchen, if there was one at all. We might only have a fireplace in the main living space of a small cottage. If we were lucky enough to have a kitchen, the majority of the cooking would be done over an open hearth, we’d build a fire of wood or coal and move a cauldron over the fire to prepare a stew or soup. A drink might be heated or kept warm in a long-handled saucepan, set on its own trivet beside the fire. Food could be fried in a pan, grilled on a gridiron, or turned on a spit. We might put together a small improvised oven for baking. Regulating the heat of the open flame was a demanding task. Cooking on an open hearth was an all-embracing way of life and most upscale kitchens had more than one fireplace with chimneys for ventilation. One fireplace was kept burning at a low, steady heat at all times for simmering or boiling water and the others used for grilling on a spit over glowing, radiant embers. This is quite a different situation than in our modern era – unless we were out camping and cooking over an open fire. In this book Katherine McIver explores the medieval kitchen from its location and layout (like Francesco Datini of Prato two kitchens), to its equipment (the hearth, the fuels, vessels and implements) and how they were used, to who did the cooking (man or woman) and who helped. We’ll look at the variety of ingredients (spices, herbs, meats, fruits, vegetables), food preservation and production (salted fish, cured meats, cheese making) and look through recipes, cookbooks and gastronomic texts to complete the picture of cooking in the medieval kitchen. Along the way, she looks at illustrations like the miniatures from the Tacuinum Sanitatis (a medieval health handbook), as well as paintings and engravings, to give us an idea of the workings of a medieval kitchen including hearth cooking, the equipment used, how cheese was made, harvesting ingredients, among other things. She explores medieval cookbooks such works as Anonimo Veneziano, Libro per cuoco (fourtheenth century), Anonimo Toscano, Libro della cucina (fourteenth century), Anonimo Napoletano (end of thirteenth/early fourteenth century), Liber de coquina, Anonimo Medidonale, Due libri di cucina (fourteenth century), Magninus Mediolanensis (Maino de’ Maineri), Opusculum de saporibus (fourteenth century), Johannes Bockenheim, Il registro di cucina (fifteenth century), Maestro Martino’s Il Libro de arte coquinaria (fifteenth century) and Bartolomeo Sacchi, called Platina’s On Right Pleasure and Good Health (1470). This is the story of the medieval kitchen and its operation from the thirteenth-century until the late fifteenth-century.

Thirty-plus recipes, including Pike with Galentyne Sauce, Dried Pea Puree with Sprouts, Grape Stuffed Boiled Chicken, and Date Slices with Spiced Wine, accompany historical background and information on food, cooking equipment, the serving of meals and the development of taste and etiquette. Color photographs & medieval woodcuts.

A delicious introduction to the food prepared in wealthy medieval French households

Presents a collection of recipes from a variety of chefs and celebrities, along with the hosts, of the "Today Show."

In this extraordinary cookbook, chef and scholar Hélène Jawhara-Piñer combines rich culinary history and Jewish heritage to serve up over fifty culturally significant recipes. Steeped in the history of the Sephardic Jews (Jews of Spain) and their diaspora, these recipes are expertly collected from such diverse sources as medieval cookbooks, Inquisition trials, medical treatises, poems, and literature. Original sources ranging from the thirteenth century onwards and written in Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Occitan, Italian, and Hebrew, are here presented in English translation, bearing witness to the culinary diversity of the Sephardim, who brought their cuisine with them and kept it alive wherever they went. Jawhara-Piñer provides enlightening commentary for each recipe, revealing underlying societal issues from anti-Semitism to social order. In addition, the author provides several of her own recipes inspired by her research and academic studies. Each creation and bite of the dishes herein are guaranteed to transport the reader to the most deeply moving and intriguing aspects of Jewish history. Jawhara-Piñer reminds us that eating is a way to commemorate the past.

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.

Maestro Martino of Como has been called the first celebrity chef, and his extraordinary treatise on Renaissance cookery, The Art of Cooking, is the first known culinary guide to specify ingredients, cooking times and techniques, utensils, and amounts. This vibrant document is also essential to understanding the forms of conviviality developed in Central Italy during the Renaissance, as well as their sociopolitical implications. In addition to the original text, this first complete English translation of the work includes a historical essay by Luigi Ballerini and fifty modernized recipes by acclaimed Italian chef Stefania Barzini. The Art of Cooking, unlike the culinary manuals of the time, is a true gastronomic lexicon, surprisingly like a modern cookbook in identifying the quantity and kinds of ingredients in each dish, the proper procedure for cooking them, and the time required, as well as including many of the secrets of a culinary expert. In his lively introduction, Luigi Ballerini places Maestro Martino in the complicated context of his time and place and guides the reader through the complexities of Italian and papal politics. Stefania Barzini's modernized recipes that follow the text bring the tastes of the original dishes into line with modern tastes. Her knowledgeable explanations of how she has adapted the recipes to the contemporary palate are models of their kind and will inspire readers to recreate these classic dishes in their own kitchens. Jeremy Parzen's translation is the first to gather the entire corpus of Martino's legacy.

A cook's book as much as a cookbook, this contains 70 authentic Mediterranean recipes adapted for today's kitchen. Re-create the bold, robust flavors of the middle ages and learn about the history of Mediterranean cuisine, including what medieval kitchens were like, the significance of spices, and etiquette when forks were not in common use.

The figure of the medieval cook revealed, in the context of time and circumstance. `Stylish and racy... An excellent book and a delight to read, written with panache and entirely convincing.' Professor PETER COSS, Cardiff University. 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 privatefunctions. 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 expectationswhich 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.

Topics examined include not just the personal eating habits of kings, queens, and nobles but also those of the peasants, monks, and other social groups not generally considered in medieval food studies."--BOOK JACKET.