Cooking and dining in Medieval England / Peter Brears.

  • Brears, Peter C. D.
Date:
2008
  • Books

About this work

Also known as

Cooking & dining in Medieval England

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." "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."--Jacket.

Publication/Creation

Blackawton, Totnes, Devon : Prospect Books, 2008.

Physical description

557 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Bibliographic information

Includes bibliographical references (p. 515-528) and indexes.

Contents

The counting house -- Planning for cooking -- Wood, coals, turves and fires -- Water supplies -- The dairy -- The brewhouse -- The bakehouse -- The pastry -- The boiling house -- The kitchen -- Kitchen furniture and equipment -- Pottage utensils -- Pottage recipes -- Leaches -- Roasting -- Frying -- The saucery -- The confectionery and wafery -- Planning meals -- The buttery and pantry -- The ewery -- Table manners -- Dining in the chamber -- Great feasts.

Languages

Where to find it

  • LocationStatus
    History of Medicine
    DFXP.AA2
    Open shelves

Permanent link

Identifiers

ISBN

  • 9781903018552
  • 1903018552