Serious Books for Serious Cooks 
MEDIEVAL COOKERY
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Medieval Arab Cookery
Papers by Maxime Rodinson & Charles Perry with a reprint of A Baghdad cookery Book. by the late Professor A. J. Arberry and a Foreword by Claudia Roden. Readers of Claudia Roden’s masterworks have long been aware of the continuities in Middle Eastern cookery, others have been tantalized by the influence of Islamic cooking on the medieval West, all will rejoice in this new gathering of papers and documents relating to medieval Arab food and cookery. The French scholar, Maxime Rodinson’s contributions are legendary , yet have only been seen in translation in Petits Propos Culinaires. These are included along with the text of his longest paper, Recherches sur les documents Arabes relatifs B la cuisine, translated by Barbara Yeomans. The American scholar Charles Perry has been entertaining participants at the Oxford Symposium with regular gleanings from his researches into medieval Arab cookery, and several of his papers are gathered here, together with a new study of fish recipes, and other items previously published in PPC.English study of the subject was first encouraged by Professor Arberry’s translation of the 13th-century cookery book Kitab al-Tabikh, published in 1939 in the periodical Islamic Culture. Readers will be pleased to have this more accessible copy, together with an introductory note and revision by Charles Perry. Prospect Books, London. Hardcover. 527 pages. ISBN: 0-907325-91-2. Stock # PB060. $55.00. (Now available).
Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe: A Book of Essays. Edited by Melitta Weiss Adamson. Routledge, New York. © 2002. First Edition. Hardcover. 254 pages. Essays by Rafael Chabrán, Constance B. Hieatt, Carole Lambert, Habeeb Salloum, Terence Scully, Johanna Maria van Winter, Simon Varey. Though many aspects of medieval cookery have been studied in the recent past, this is the first book to systematically address the question of regionalism and interregional influences in the areas of food production and consumption. This is a sumptuous feast for anyone interested in the history of food. Stock # RB010 $85.00
Libellus de arte coquinaria: An Early Northern Cookery Book. Edited and translated by Rudolf Grewe and Constance B. Hieatt. The collection of medieval culinary recipes here published probably dates from the early 13th-C 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. Medieval & Renaissance Tests, 2000. 176 pp. ISBN: 0-86698-264-7. Hardcover. Stock # MT002. $25.00
Living and Dining in Medieval Paris: Medieval Paris: The Household of a Fourteenth Century Knight By Nicole Crossley-Holland This study is based largely around a manuscript written in the 1390s the Ménagier de Paris for the instruction of his young wife on how to run her kitchen. In it, Nicole Crossley-Holland combines the scholarly with the practical in introducing us to the sophisticated world of the Parisian upper class. She offers us menus and advice on food preparation and household skills and goes on to identify the author of this manuscript, something which had remained a mystery until now. She examines typical Parisian houses, the origins of the produce, the diet of the household and provides translations of many of the primary sources. University of Wales Press 2000. 244 pp, 24 b/w illus Paper ISBN: 0-7083-1647-6. Stock # DB004. $35.00 (This book is a “special order.” Please allow 6 weeks for delivery. We have 5 copies in stock as of 9/2/02.) Everyday Life in Medieval England. Christopher Dyer. "This is an excellent book, not just in its detailed evidence but as an arresting survey of rural society, particularly at the sub-aristocratic level. It extends our knowledge of social history with new insights into how people lived, worked, ate, traded and related to one another." -- Nicholas Orme. Hambledon Press, London. First Published 1994. This Edition 2000. 336 pages. Paper. Illus. ISBN: 1-85285-201-1 Stock # HB005 $30.00
THE GREAT HOUSEHOLD IN LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND By C. M. Woolgar 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, and food and drink for daily consumption Yale University Press. © 1999 288 pp. 70 b/w + 16 colorplates, 6 3/4 x 9 ¾ $40.00
The Neapolitan Recipe Collection: Cuoco Napoletano Feasting as a window into medieval Italian culture By Terence Scully . Outstanding among these early cookbooks is the one written by an anonymous master cook in Naples toward the end of the 15th 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. Published by the University of Michigan Press.7 x 10, 264 pp. © 2000 Cloth $47.50
The Medieval Calender Year. Bridget Ann Henisch. This book celebrates the pictorial convention known as "The Labors of the Months" and the ways in which it was used in the Middle Ages. The traditional cycle depicts the year as a round of seasonal activities on the land. Each month has its allotted task, and each of these represents one stage in the never-ending process of providing food for society. Richly illustrated with more than 100 images. Bridget Henisch is the author of Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society. The Pennsylvania State University Press. © 1999. 232 pages. Paper. B & W and Color photos. $21.95
Art, Culture, and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy.Phyllis Pray Bober, "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are," quipped the 18th-century gastronomer Brillat-Savarin. Indeed, cooking and eating transcend mere alimentary necessity--how we define, prepare, and consume our daily bread can detail a full range of social expression. In Art, Culture, and Cuisine, Phyllis Pray Bober examines cooking through the dual lens of archaeology and art history. She shows that cuisine--the higher, skilled, and creative manifestation of cooking--is an art that should be elevated to the level of those more generally termed "fine." Bober describes prehistoric eating in ancient Turkey; traditions of the great civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome; and rituals of the Middle Ages and the "Late Gothic International" period. To satisfy the adventurous reader, Bober has included old menus with contemporary adaptations. With strong humor and deep love for her subject matter, Bober shows, for the first time, cuisine and dining's place at the heart of cultural, religious, and social activities that have shaped Western sensibilities.464 p., 140 halftones. 6-5/8 x 9-3/8 1999 The University of Chicago Press. Cloth $50.00: Paper $25.00
Food and Drink in Medieval Poland: Rediscovering a Cuisine of the Past By Maria Dembinska. Magdalena Thomas, Translator. Edited and Adapted by William Woys Weaver This is the first book of its kind in English to explore the fascinating culinary history of medieval Poland. It represents the fruits of a twenty-year collaboration between two distinguished food historians, William Woys Weaver and the late Maria Dembinska. Freely adapted from a pioneering work first published by Dembninska in 1963, this new edition explores the subject of Polish medieval cuisine through archaeology, material culture, and ethnography, along with other perspectives and techniques. Weaver has included thirty-five carefully reconstructed recipes, from courtier’s pottage, a one-pot dinner popular with rich peasants and petty nobles, to game stewed with sauerkraut, to a court dish of baked fruit, to Polish hydromel, an easily made drink favored with honey and fennel. 256 pages, 7 x 10, Cloth University of Pennsylvania Press. 1999. $29.95 PLATINA On Right Pleasure and Good Health A Critical Edition and Translation of De Honesta Voluptate et Valetudine by Mary Ella Milham A virtual handbook of food, Platina's De Honesta voluptate is offered here in the first modern translation that goes back to the original manuscript and deals with Platina's originality, his sources, and the textual proofs. The first half of the book discusses all kinds of food and spices, their nature, and their cultivation. The second half is drawn primarily from Martino and his Italian cookbook. Readers will see how Platina's work was informed by classicists such as Pliny and ancient poets, by Arabic ideas on the principles of health, and by his regard for the medicinal uses of food. Readers will also see that the life of Bartolomeo Sacchi, known to his contemporaries as Platina, was full of excitement and involvement in the political affairs of 15th -century Italy. Yet not until now have the events of his whole life been put into a coherent, chronological order. Milham achieves that goal, painting in her full introduction a rich and detailed picture of Platina's wide circle of influential friends -- many of them the leading humanists of the day -- and the intellectual and cultural circles in which he moved. Of interest to classicists and Renaissance scholars, this work will be a major contribution for culinary historians, who will find in it a fascinating and important record. This book is published by the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies: Tempe, Arizona. 528 pages. © 1998 Cloth Stock # MT001 $35.00
We also offer Mary eElla Milham's Edited and abridged edition by of Platina's On Right Pleasure and Good Health, published by The University of North Carolina at Asheville. 200 pages, 6" x 9", Paper, ISBN: 1-8898-1812-7. Stock # PL001. $19.95
All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England & France from the Middle Ages to the Present. So close geographically, how could France and England be so enormously far apart gastronomically? Not just in different recipes and ways of cooking, but in their underlying attitudes toward the enjoyment of eating and its place in social life. All Manners of Food debunks long-standing myths and provides a wealth of information. University of Illinois Press. 300 pp. © 1996. $18.95 Paper
The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages. By Terence Scully. The Cookery of the late middle ages has been unjustly neglected. Numerous references exist showing what food was customarily eaten across Europe by the aristocracy of the time, but it is only recently that scholarly research has extracted a number of recipes from manuscript sources and made them generally available. In this fascinating study, Dr. Scully examines both the theory and practice of medieval cooking, demonstrating their complex interdependence. The Boydell Press. 276 pp. ©1995 Paper. ISBN: 0-85115-430-1. Stock # BP001 $31.00
Curye on Inglysch (English Culinary Manuscripts of the fourteenth Century (Including the Forme of Cury)Hieatt, Constance B. and Sharon Butler. (Editor). The recipes collected in this volume come from more than twenty manuscripts, few of which have ever been printed or collated before. The recipes date from the 14th-century, the earliest period for which we have any such collections in English. Published for The Early English Text Society by the Oxford University Press, London and NY. 1985. 224 pages. Cloth. ISBN: 0-19-722409-1. Stock # BP003 $29.95
Du manuscrit à la table, Sous la direction de Carole Lambert. Cet ouvrage présente différents essais sur les pratiques culinaires du Moyen Âge ainsi qu'un répertoire exhausif des manuscrits médiévaux contenant des recettes de cuisine. NOTE: Some of the papers in this collection are in English, most are in French. This is an important research book for serious students of Medieval food practices. Les Presses De L'université de Montréal 391 pp ©1992. Paper. Stock # GM001 $45.00 .
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Early French Cookery: Sources, History, Original Recipes & Modern Adaptations. By D. Eleanor Scully and Terence Scully. This book introduces the general features of the food prepared for wealthy French households at the end of the Middle Ages. The volume presents over 100 recipes, drawn from actual medieval manuscripts, together with preparation instructions. The authors help place these enticing recipes in context through a short survey of medieval dining behavior, and they give practical menu suggestions for preparing simple meals or banquets that incorporate these delicious dishes. University of Michigan Press. 330 pp. ©1996 $34.50 Hardcover. |
Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society. By Bridget Ann Henisch. 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. What was a banquet like? This book is recommended for lovers of food history, and students of medieval life and literature.Pennsylvania State University Press. 279 pp. ©1994.Paper. ISBN: 0-271-00424-X. Stock # PS001 $19.95
Food and Eating in Medieval Europe. Edited by Martha Carlin and Joel T. Rosenthal. The essays in this volume approach the 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. Contributors include Elizabeth M. Berbel, Christophen Dyer, Constance B. Hieatt, Margaret Murphy, Susan F. Weiss and Julia Marvin.200 pages. ©1997 Hardcover ISBN: 1-85285-148-1. Stock # HP001. $45.00 (This is a British import)
Food in the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays. Edited by Melitta Weiss Adamson. Publisher: Garland. 1995. 224 pages. Hardcover. 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 inch. ISBN: 0-815-31345-4. Cloth. The enormous interst in recent years in the role of food in history has inspired this scholarly collection. Examines the subject of medieval food from a variety of disciplines. Contributors include: Terence Scully, Constance B. Hieatt, Barbara Santich and many others. Stock # 000484 $70.00
The Medieval Cookbook By Maggie Black. Here is a delicious and beautifully illustrated survey of the Middle Ages and its food. This mouthwatering selection of eighty recipes has been drawn from medieval manuscripts and adapted for the modern kitchen. Each section has an introduction which sets the historical and literary contest. Thames and Hudson. Hardcover.144 pp. 77 Illus. ©1992 ISBN: 0-500-01548-1. Stock # TH002. $24.95
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The Medieval Kitchen. By Odile Redon, Francoise Sabban and Silvano Serventi. Translated by Edward Schneider. Original line drawings by Patricia Glee Smith. More than a mere cookbook, The Medieval Kitchen vividly depicts the context and tradition of authentic medieval cookery. Culture and cuisine become thoroughly entwined, informing and transforming one another. Etiquette at table and the aesthetics of the meal, the seasonal variations evidenced in feast days and fast days, the foods of the city and the country as well, the diets of the rich and the poor, and the ingenious methods and techniques employed in medieval culinary arts–all this is brought to scholarly light. 336 pages (est), 12 color plates, numerous line drawings. Cloth. Stock # UC003 $32.50; Paper Stock # UC004 $18.00 NOW AVAILABLE |
Medieval Life Illustrations. Selected and arranged by Carol Belanger Grafton.This collection includes over 700 clear, finely detailed authentic medieval vignettes culled from a very rare 20-volume archive of incunabula illustrations as well as images from a host of hard-to-find 19th century books and magazines. Dover Publications. 136 pages 8,3/8 X 11,1/4 Paper Stock # DP008 $9.95
Medieval Woodcut Illustrations. City Views and Decorations from “The Nuremberg Chronicle” 194 Illustrations. Grafton, Carol Belanger. (Selected and Arranged)Perhaps the most elaborately illustrated book of the 15th century. A rich selection of plates from this 1493 history of the world, long a treasured favorite of collectors, is now available in this inexpensive edition. Invaluable as a sourcebook of copyright-free material for artists, illustrators, and others. Dover Publications, Inc., Mineola, NY. 1999. 73 pages. Paper.Stock # DP011 $8.95
Pleyn Delit: Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks. Second Edition. Constance B. Hieatt, Brenda Hosington, and Sharon Butler. "Pleyn Delit has a multitude of virtues...Both the novice and the expert cook will be able to use it, and there are recipes in it to please both simple and exotic tastes." London Free Press. 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. University of Toronto Press. 172 pp.©1996. Paper Stock # UT002 $17.95
Savoring the Past: The French Kitchen and Table from 1300 to 1789. By Barbara K. Wheaton. From the splendid, gaudy late medieval feasts to the intimate suppers of the 18th century, Savoring the Past is the first work to describe–with both charm and scholarship–the fascinating evolution of haute cuisine and cuisine bourgeoisie. Simon and Schuster. 340 pp. ©1996. Paper. Stock # BW001 $16.00 (This book is now out of print but we have a few copies in stock.)
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Sip Through Time: A Collection of Old Brewing Recipes. By CindyRenfrow.
This illustrated volume contains hundreds of old recipes for ale, beer, mead, metheglin,
cider, perry, brandy , liqueurs, distilled waters, hypocras, wines, etc. dating from 1800
BC to modern times.Privately Printed, 335 pages, ©1995 Paper. Stock # CR002 $17.95,
.
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Take a Thousand Eggs or More: A Collection of 15th Century Recipes. By Cindy Renfrow. 2nd Edition, 2-volume set.. A translation of medieval recipes from Harleian MS. 279, Harleian MS. 4016, and extracts of Ashmole MS. 1439, Laud MS. 553, and Douce MS. 55, with over 100 recipes adapted for modern cookery. This two-volume set features 400 documented 15th C recipes plus modern English translations; a standard glossary; a glossary of common recurring phrases; an improved index; sample feast menus; an expanded how-to section; a bibliography; number of suggested servings; and much more, all lavishly illustrated with period woodcuts. Spiral-bound, 640 pages, Stock # CR001 $27.00 |
Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books. Edited by Thomas Austin. The ancient cookeries edited in this volume have been copied from Harleian MSS, 297 and 4016, in the British Museum. The first MS. is divided into three parts, the first, headed Kalendare de Potages dyuers, containing 153 recipes; the second part, Kalendare de Leche Metys, has 64 recipes, and the third Part, Dyuerse bake metis, 41 recipes. Published for The Early English Text Society by the Oxford University Press. 151 pages. Unaltered reprint of the 1888 edition in 1996. Hardcover. ISBN: 0-85991-849-1. Stock # BP002 $45.00 (Now Available)
The Vivendier. Terence Scully,
Editor and Translator. The culinary portion of an extensive 15th century French manuscript
now residing in Kassel, Germany. Recipes given in their original tongue and in
translation with commentary. fortunately, the work has been done by Terence Scully
who has long been working with culinary manuscripts from the same period and is uniquely
qualified to interpret them to a modern audience. Contains series of appendices.
More than 60 recipes. 129 pp. PROSPECT BOOKS. Paper 154 mm x 235 mm. Stock # PB042
$24.00
The Viandier of Taillevent: An Edition of all Extant Manuscripts. Edited by Terence Scully. The Viandier is the most important early recipe collection of medieval France. Written in the fourteenth century by Guillaume Tirel (alias Taillevent), the chief cook of King Charles V of France, it is the starting point of many culinary traditions and practices that remain at the base of modern French haute cuisine. This volume is the first to present all four extant manuscripts of the Viandier, arranged in parallel for easy comparison. The texts of the 220 recipes are in the original French, but a complete English translation is provided. University of Ottawa Press. 330 pp. ©1988 Hardcover. Stock # UT001 $35.00 .
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Traditional Food From Wales. by Bobby Freeman. Here is a unique look at Welsh food and customs through the ages, from 12th century Welsh nobility to 18th century gentry; from cottager, farmer, fisherman to the present day aficionado of organic cheeses, wines and waters. Written in the author's entertaining, demystifying style. This book combines over 260 authentic, proven recipes with cultural and social history. "The first ever comprehensive guide to Welsh food." -- The Observer. Hippocrene Books. © 1997 332 pages, b/w photos, Hardcover Stock # HP035 $24.95 |
USED TITLES
Cosman, Madeleine Pelner. Fabulous Feasts: Medieval Cookery and Ceremony. George Braziller, New York. Paper. Fifth Printing. ISBN: 0-8076-0832-7. 1976. 224 pages. Illustrated B/W & Color. Stock # 000679B. $16.00
Thrupp, Sylvia L. The Merchant Class of Medieval London. (1300 - 1500) Ann Arbor Paperbacks - The University of Michigan Press. ISBN: 0-472-06072-4. Paper. 1976. 401 pages. As new condition. Stock # 000502 $15.00
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If you read spanish please visit Teresa de Castro's site in Granada, Spain. She is a young Spanish ethnohistorian. She has a web site about food in history including information about her publications on medieval castilian and andalusian food. |
If you read French you might enjoy Gastronomie Medievale. at: http://www.fwd.fr/table-des-echevins/Presentation%20du%20site.htm
Cuisine Before Forks, an interview with Barbara Wheaton, honorary curator of the culinary collection at Radcliffe's Schlesinger Library.
Check out "Serve It forth!" a periodical forum for SCA cooks. Serve It forth! is a newsletter about pre-17th century cooking, culinary sources, culinary history, ingredients, food, and foodways. It contains book reviews, recipes (both original and redacted), feast plans, tips on kitchen management and the preparation of feasts, anecdotes, and articles and research. for further information, contact Mistress Elaina at elaina@rialto.org. For more information visit their web page at http://oldcolo.com/~memorman/sif_home.html.
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The Internet Connection for Medieval Resources at the Catholic University of America. |
Le Ménagier De Paris. This is an unabridged transcription of the food and cookery chapter of Le Ménagier de Paris (a medieval manuscript dated to circa 1393), edited by Jérome Pichon in 1846 for La Société Des Bibliophiles François.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to Ancient Cookery. A series of articles about the process of developing a feast menu with an SCA audience in mind.
Master Huen's Boke of Gode Cookery. A compilation of Medieval recipes from period sources, with modern adaptations for the 20th century kitchen.
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