The Culinary Recipes of Medieval England

The great advantage for students of medieval English cookery is that there is an identifiable corpus of evidence in the manuscripts that have survived to the present day. Although there may be some new discoveries, in general terms the corpus is relatively stable. The beauty of this book is that it addresses the corpus as a whole and abstracts from it paradigm recipes for every medieval dish that we know about. With this book therefore a student can ask ‘How did they cook rabbit stew?’ and find a definitive answer, in modern English, with full references. This is a great step forward and the book will stand as a monument to the untiring efforts of the late Constance Hieatt to understand and interpret English cookery of the middle ages. The book is organised by category of dish (Pottage; Meat Dishes; Poultry and Game Birds; Fish; Eggs and Dairy Dishes; Sauces and Condiments, and Baked Dishes). For each dish the editor has chosen what is in her view the most typical example and, citing the source, translates the original text.

Author Biography

The late Constance Hieatt’s work in editing and interpreting medieval English recipe texts is of long-standing repute. She has published An Ordinance of Pottage with Prospect Books and Curye on Inglysch with the EETS. Other works include Pleyn Delit and Libellus de Arte Coquinaria. Her final edition was of recipes from Corpus Christi College, Oxford, which we titled Cocatrice and Lampray Hay and published last year. Constance Hieatt died at Christmas 2011.