The medieval cookbook (review)

118 Reviews Black, Maggie, The medieval cookbook, London, British Museum Press, 1992; cloth; pp. 143; 30 colour and 12 black and white photographs; 35 line illustrations; R.R.P. AUSS49.95 [distributed in Australia by Thames & Hudson]. Many readers of Parergon will have been approached by colleagues who expect them, as the resident medieval/Renaissance 'specialists', to design a medieval banquet for a conference dinner or a special occasion. They will welcome this beautiful, small-format coffee-table volume, illustrated with reproductions from manuscripts, printed books, panels and frescoes, and designed to tempt the eye and the palate. Handsomely printed in Italy for the British Museum Press, Maggie Black's Medieval cookbook, contains recipes assembled from a range of published sources, and set in context with a judicious selection of food and eating descriptions from contemporary writers. The recipes derive for the most part from French and English sources after 1066. Each recipe is transcribed in the original language, and followed by a list of modern equivalents or substitutes for the ingredients, and instructions for preparation in the m o d e m kitchen. Some of the recipes look mouth-watering. The Iowtes (leeks) of almaund mylke took m y fancy, so I procured the necessary ingredients and set to work. Take erbes; boile hem, hewe hem, and grynde hem small. Take almaundus iblaunched; grynde hem and drawe hem vp with water. Set hem on the fire and seeth the iowtes with the milke, and cast thereon sugur & salt, & seme i t forth. The soup is a 'rich dark green' when prepared with 900g. of winter leaves of English spinach, leeks, fresh herbs and so on. Since it is in the section, Life in the cloister, and is suggested for Lent, I should have expected something spartan. I did not expect anything quite so tasteless. Perhaps we , should always assume that the 'water' used to make the almond milk is good hot stock. The soup certainly tasted better after stock was added. Other recipes have been modified almost beyond recognition. Sweetsour spiced rabbit reads in the original: Egurdouce. Take connynges or kydde and smite hem on peecys rawe, and fry hem in white grece. Take raysouns of coraunce and fry hem. Take oynouns, perboile him and hewe hem small and fry hem. Take rede wine and a lytel vynegur, sugar, with powdour of peper, of gynger, of canel, salt; and cast therto, and lat it seeth with a gode quantite of white grece; & seme it forth. Reviews 119 Black does not share therecipe'senthusiasm for 'white grece', presumably because her game butcher provides her with fat, juicy rabbits. Lashings of oil or dripping will, however, compensate for the dryness of the wild Australian rabbit, and the spices here provide its exquisite sour-sweet flavour. Was Anglo-French medieval cuisine delicious enough to bear this kind of effort in hewing and smiting, boyling and streyningl Has the presence in our larders of garlic, tomatoes, and potatoes spoilt our palates? I looked at Emilio Faccioli's unsurpassed volume, L'arte della cucina in Italia: libri di ricette e trattati sulla civilta della tavola dal XIV al XIX secolo (Turin, 19 to see if there was a great difference. Thefifteenth-centuryEnglishrecipefor losyns differs from the fourteenth-century Tuscan recipe for lasagne only in the specification that poudre douce (a mixture of mace and cardamom or cinnamon with white pepper) should be added. The Italian recipes are distinguished, however, by a wondrous range of ingredients, farricherand more varied and appetising, and corresponding more closely to the range of ingredients available in m o d e m markets. Maggie Black's Medieval cookbook is part of a very successful worldwide trend in museum marketing, namely quality reproductions of museum holdings, in this case of medieval texts and illustrations, which are made available through outlets far beyond the original museum. While it may not supersede Constance B. Hieatt and Sharon Butler's very plain Pleyn delit: medieval cookery for modern cooks, with aU its menu advice for conference dinner organizers, this is certainly a more beautiful book, created to please the eye and the mind, even if the palate was less impressed. Nerida Newbigin Department of Italian University of...