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Enjoyed reading the Medieval English. It was so concise & ideal for documentation:
“Tak cheryes & do out the stones & grynde hem wel & draw hem thorw a streynour & do it in a pot.”
That was the style of recipes until the Fanny Farmer cookbook in 1896:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boston_Cooking-School_Cook...
They basically assumed you had already watched the recipe being made, and just needed a reminder. (Chefs still communicate a lot like this with each other.) My favorite recipe direction ever, from Martha Washington's family cookbook, is "cook until it is enough".
Fanny Farmer invented the idea of rigorous measurements. And later, exact temperatures and times, when thermostats were invented. Scientific cooking is great for getting the results to come out every time and to communicate recipes to people who don't already basically know them. That took a lot of standardization and didn't come about until quite recently.
The only downside to her cookbooks is that she used volumetric measurements rather than weight. Volumetric measurements are fine for liquids, but very imprecise for ingredients that may be densely or loosely packed. Depending on how you scoop it, the density of flour may vary by as much as 50%. Measurement by mass avoids this issue entirely.
Source: https://www.seriouseats.com/2017/03/how-to-measure-flour-dip...
It seems a bit unfair to label it a downside to just her cookbooks. At least in the US, it's only been recently that recipe providers have transitioned to weight based recipes, with folks like Kenji championing the transition.
Cooking by weight is much more pleasant. You can just put a bowl on the scale and keep adding stuff to it. It saves you a lot of cleaning.
> cook until it is enough
I’m glad recipes have moved past this but I still see code with these types of comments all the time. Maybe in another 100 years it’ll be unthinkable to write documentation this way? One can hope.
"...It was so concise & ideal for documentation:"
I reckon you're right, in some ways writing back then was more straightforward and direct. I'm guessing but perhaps that's because one had less exposure to the written word back then so writers were less corrupted by others' style.
I recall schooldays when I had to study some Chaucer, even this prose made sense once you got the gist of how to interpret it. (I'd add the caveat however: some words and phrases defied modern understanding without some form of translation, footnote explanations etc. Same applied to Shakespeare but to a lesser extent.)
Also, paper was expensive.
Even today, hand-made paper (I bought some in one of a few old manual mills that are still in operation [0]) costs approximately one dollar per single A4.
Yeah it's expensive, but nevertheless it's lovely classy stuff.
(Electronic screens are fine in their place but atoms printed onto fine paper—preferably by the traditional letterpress method—is another higher experience altogether. Not only does the inky smell of freshly printed material add to the experience but so does the tactile feel of letterpress type indents.)
I found this strange effect while reading it. If I focused on each word, and tried to make sense of it, I could not grasp what was being instructed. However, if I read at normal speed, my brain seemed to pattern match the words and convert them to the modern usage and I could make sense of it.
Agreed. A trained or experienced cook would have no issues with these instructions. When you learn cooking as a trade you learn basic techniques so actual recipes are terse and deal in basic components, techniques to combine or prepare them, and maybe some special instructions that go beyond this.
If this article excited you, you might enjoy the YouTube channel called "Tasting History". In each video the author goes into a recipe and the story/circunstances surrounding it: https://www.youtube.com/c/tastinghistory
The scripting is spot on: lighthearted and informative, with the correct dose of humor. I really recommend it.
In a similar vein with lots of cooking videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/jastownsendandson/videos
I disagree. The host cuts corners all the time so much so that it’s no where near authentic. The worst one was the Roman garum episode where he basically just boiled some fish bones and called it a day. Garum is fermented fish sauce that takes weeks to make.
I can recommend Townsends and son, that is truly a fantastic channel.
I especially like Tasting History because of the breadth of recipes featured. They range from delicious, Pumpkin Pie, to educational but unappealing, Spartan Black Broth.
I can't recommend this channel enough, it's an absolute delight.
A few years ago the podcast Planet Money prepared a peacock according to a recipe published in 1612. This recipe was meant for really rich Dutch people, and apparently being really rich meant showing of how many spices you could afford on your food. Pretty interesting and funny read/listen.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/01/01/461504972/epis...
> apparently being really rich meant showing of how many spices you could afford on your food. Pretty interesting and funny read/listen.
So was being overweight (look at the art/self portraits and busts) for most of Human existence, the irony being that obesity (and heart disease) is now one of the pretty big indicators of poverty--an attribute of a poor diet, insulin resistance and inflammation from even worse eating habits coupled with limited/no physical activity.
I heard Mat Taibii's guest on a podcast mention this being as common as it in the 21st Century an how its a significant anomaly/reversal for most of History. Hell, I mean even in growing up in the 90s it wasn't as common as it is now there was usually just one 'fat kid' in a group of friends, now its hard to see there being less than 3 in any group of people.
It's tragic how pervasive this is on most of Western Society, the level of dietary ignorance is astonishing, but made worse yet by how addictive they make the processed foods, which in theory if you had some sort daily physical activity to burn those calories would be fine but most don't.
During my apprenticeship when I farmed I used to eat 5000+ calories throughout the day and still managed to be caloric deficient and often lost weight until Sunday (our only day off) when I could eat the same amount of food and properly hydrate with only 1/2 days instead of the 12+ hours of intense manual labour.
> and apparently being really rich meant showing of how many spices you could afford on your food. Pretty interesting and funny read/listen.
This isn't really changed, the only difference is that we have replaced some ingredients (pepper, cinnamon etc) with others (truffle, caviar etc).
It's far easier to find "high end" dishes made with exotic components than plain ones.
The recipe wasn’t a total abomination until they got to the “pastry.” What does “put it in pastry” mean in this context?
I think it meant you wrap it in pastry, like you do with a beef wellington.
> What does “put it in pastry” mean in this context?
Completely enclose it in pastry dough. Especially since it's a pheasant pie, having a pastry layer above the filling is pretty standard to this day for savoury pies (just check… most every meat pie, or a pot pie if you're from the US).
Put it in the pie crust.
If some of you are interested in medieval cooking, but based on old French cooking books, I would recommend "Cuisine médiévale pour tables d'aujourd'hui" de Jeanne Bourin.
I got it as a gift a decade ago, and I still love to read it and try out weird recipes.
Each recipe is presented in its original version written in old French, and in a translated and modernized version.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2364514.Cuisine_m_di_val...
Although it covers other historical periods, it seems remiss of the article to not mention Hartley’s Food in England:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_in_England
If you like your geese by the dozen, packed upside down in a wooden barrel filled with clarified butter, it is a must-read.
Non-mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_in_England
Is C Dickson Wright's 'A History of English Food' comparable to Hartley?
So much saffron!
Just so I have more to add than that observation, I recommend anyone who's interested in the Middle English in these recipes to check out this episode of The History of English Podcast looking at a 14th-century cookbook:
https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2019/12/19/episode-132-f...
"Cooking in the Archives" is a good blog about this kind of thing - https://rarecooking.com (I made https://rarecooking.com/2019/12/11/how-to-make-knotts/ last year and they were pretty good.)
Did anyone else go to the Renaissance festival as a kid? I would assume it's a no-go with Covid, but damn if Broccoli and Cheese in a Bread Bowl wasn't the most amazing meal I've ever had...
On the same note, I'd recommend the very well documented and funny BBC series Supersizers Go: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0815CC4054AB8D12
There's a (very expensive) restaurant run by Heston Blumenthal in London that recreates historic British dishes, and gives the dates with each: https://dinnerbyheston.co.uk/menus It's a nice conceit, and I took my wife there for a big birthday, but unfortunately we were slightly disappointed, apart from the wines and a "14th Century" goats-milk cheesecake, which was out of this world. It's not that the food was bad, but it didn't quite live up to the prices in our view.
Tasting History is a wonderful YouTube series about history and food.
Amazing the recipes survived considering the cooks were probably illiterate until somewhat recently. They are written in Old English though so someone decided it was worth recording them way back when.
It is humbling to see what variety, quality, and quantity of food is available today. I didn’t really think twice that I’m able to easily get a rib roast to cook for Christmas dinner and have already been planning the delicious roast beef sandwiches I’ll make from the leftovers.
I noticed the site was taking a while to load.. I wonder if we're all generating more traffic than the museum is used to receiving :-) The pickle recipe looks good.
I've always wanted to see a culinary museum. Imagine rotating exhibits where experts are brought in from around the world and visitors can try samples.
I reckon some of those recipes are quite excellent (by my standards at any rate). If I were one of the upper classes back then I'd certainly not be complaining about the lack of variety.
That said, disease and hygiene being what they were combined with brutish times makes me not what to be there.
Here's an amusing song about medieval food, at least is you might find it today at a reenactment [1].
[1] https://www.reverbnation.com/artist/song_details/2930843
https://archive.vn/qtZTC mirror
Is it that for posterity of because British Museum does not load at your location?
I enjoy reading the oddest things while I eat, one being medieval cuisine. Oh Pliny the Elder.
It seems a little extreme that honey is not considered yo be vegan.
Interesting! Thanks for sharing!
I can't even imagine a life without New World domesticated cultivars.
It's even more perplexing when you consider that some countries that today are strongly associated with certain ingredients (Germany and potatoes, Italy and tomatoes), didn't know them until a few centuries ago.