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About this item:

This new work by Peter Brears, perhaps Britain's foremost expert on the historical kitchen, looks at these important elements of cooking and dining. 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. 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 and the rituals that grew up around these. Here, Peter Brears has drawn a 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.

Review

If you have any idea of how people ate in England six hundred years ago, you may well have gotten it from Hollywood productions featuring castles in which rollicking banqueters dined exclusively on whole suckling pig, and practiced their belching and food-throwing at table. It won t come as any surprise that what makes good movies can make bad history. If you are interested in food, cooking, and historic recipes, and you want to get a more accurate picture than Hollywood offers, Peter Brears is your man.'--Rob Hardy"

This is an important and authoritative book.'--Constance B. Hieatt"Speculum" (01/01/0001)

About the Author

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. His previous, recent book with Prospect Books is Traditional Food in Yorkshire.

Review:

4.3 out of 5

86.67% of customers are satisfied

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent information source for all

H.H. · 29 March 2009

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.

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic sence for detail

A. · 2 March 2010

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.

4.0 out of 5 stars Food and Social History

C. · 23 August 2014

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

4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars

A.C. · 18 January 2017

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

1.0 out of 5 stars One Star

M.R. · 23 August 2014

great useful knowledge

4.0 out of 5 stars A must-read book for any food-based historical re-enactor

M.T. · 3 August 2010

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!

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding.

R.H. · 6 April 2022

Excellent book, beautifully researched, written and illustrated.

More medieval pleasures

E.N.A. · 28 May 2009

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

thorough and interesting

M.J.M. · 15 June 2010

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

Extremely comprehensive

M.S.M. · 29 September 2024

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

Has it all great historical lesson in cooking.

S. · 3 January 2013

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

Great History

r. · 9 June 2014

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

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Cooking and Dining in Medieval England

Name: Cooking and Dining in Medieval England
Brand: Prospect Books
SKU: K1903018870
Price: 23.98 BHD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.7 (12 reviews)

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