Medieval society’s  dependence upon plants for every aspect of its existence has frequently expanded the enthusiasm of gardeners to embrace all things medieval so that Peter Brears “Cooking & Dining in Medieval England” will not only  be warmly welcomed by its core target of kitchen architects and social historians but also by a far wider constituency.  To horticulturalists much of the fascination of the book will lie in the fate of  outdoor produce once it has been handed over by the grower to the indoor staff.  (shredded between a couple of 16 inch pistol-gripped tuppenny knives on a special table which gives some idea of the detail of this book)

Brears plots his work with a rare logic for although treating the techniques of cooking in elaborate detail, the soups, sauces, roasting , frying, confectionary etc,  he commences with budgeting,  situating the kitchen and providing fuel and water before going on to  the great domestic offices,-  the bakehouse,  brewhouse, the dairy and the boilinghouse, obviously considerations to be  finalised prior to equiping the kitchen itself. By this point (page 173) he has already introduced us to a considerable number of recipes,  amongst which fish play a prominent role,  the fish-day  “chewets”  are delicious and given the Crusaders habit of stopping off at Palermo, it can not be coincidental that these are almost identical to the modern Sicilian Sarde a beccafico. In spite of the number of meatless days in the religious calendar, cheerfully subverted by gluttonous clerics classifying beavers as fish for instance, the  Hollywood myth of a population of uncouth thugs subsisting on a diet of boar and venison is so pervasive that many have accepted it as the truth. However Brear’s  emphasis on pork and poultry knocks this popular misconception on the head for in the real world the ready availability of medieval pigs and fowls  compared with the expense and the unpredictability of the hunt offered a far better likelihood of a full stomach. That said, modern vegetarians wanting to try the medieval diet for themselves will find themselves well catered for, though hopefully heeding John Russell’s warning to cook the “worts” first “Beware of saladis, grene metis & of frutes rawe/for they make many a man haue a feble mawe”  The medievals were ever conscious of their hygiene limitations and  like them, we should never forget how the garden had been fertilized. 

With the infrastructure out of the way, Brears gets on with the hefty main  recipe section the indexing of which takes up ten pages alone  and  which forms the central section of the book.  The diversity of the ways in which the comparatively limited range of primary ingredients are used is striking indeed.  Admittedly permutations of  spices and dried fruit were needed to provide essential interest to the winter menu but these  were easily stored and took up limited shipping space  One feels that Brear’s compilation could well become a  standard text for  the environmentalists who insist upon using nothing but seasonal home-grown produce, all the more so since many dishes are already familiar; eggy bread for instance  was enjoyed as much by my children in the twentieth century as it was by those in the thirteenth.  Lest this gives the impression that Brears’ recipes will only appeal to the muesli-and-sandals brigade these days, he lets rip on the breathtaking “subtleties” for royal feasts. Should one find the craftsmen with the skills and patience to reproduce confectionary menageries, flocks of swans made of brawn and whole hagiologies of sugar saints (who, he warns absorb atmospheric humidity and disolve into syrup within hours) today, they would cause even the most lavish footballer’s wedding  feast to look like a meal in a paupers’ refuge in comparison. The chapter  that follows though would come as a bucket of cold water on those inspired to provide an authentic medieval feast for one of these “celebrity” weddings, - it is concerned with table manners, salutary reading for those who enjoy a modern “pig-out”

Finally mention should be made of the marvellous drawings by the author himself, as detailed and as accessible as his text.

A veritable feast of a book but one light enough to leave the reader feeling he could consume it all over again