Maggie Black (1)Critiques

An interesting look at food culture in Georgian/Regency England, accompanied by dozens of contemporary recipes each with a modern "translation" to allow you to cook your own if you so please. I have to admit that I'm highly unlikely to ever try any of them myself—even in modernised form, many of them seem really fussy and time-consuming, and the flavour profiles preferred by the average member of the Georgian gentry seem quite different from my own. (The inclusion of photographs of the various dishes might have helped to whet the appetite more.) However, still fascinating to dip into, and full of interesting little nuggets of information—such as the fact that Austen's contemporaries were as likely to use the still-rare potato in sweet as they were in savoury dishes.½

3/26/22

Any fan of Jane Austen's novels would do well to read, or at least sample, this book. Austen's work is the story of domestic life of her time, and this book provides a lot of useful information about an important context of her novels: food, meals, and dining. What is a nuncheon? How do cooks cope without refrigeration? And how, specifically, does one prepare many of the foods familiar to Austen's world? This book addresses these questions, in a well-written and well-researched style. It is physically attractive, and soundly based on contemporaneous records and recipes ('receipts') of the time, although these were recorded in ways foreign to us.

The new edition is better set than the old one. Otherwise very little change.

I am yet to try any of the recipes. However it has good chapter introductions and interesting recipes - quite a few of which I do want to try.

A few points of critique - which is properly due to the age of the book
- She is using a blender quite a lot which makes it harder to see how to use the recipe in a reenactment setting.
- I don't read old english (as english is not my first language) so when she refers to the original recipe (printed at the top of each page) she looses me.
- I am really missing a introduction to each recipe - many of them complacently foreign to me both because of the name and the age of the dish.
- I really wish for pictures of the dishes - luckly the internet can often help with that.

But it was an inspiring read and I read it all in a day.

My review: http://www.mackat.dk/postej/2016/10/20/the-medieval-cookbook/

Want to throw a medieval feast? This is the book you need. Lots of great recipes and stories to give you a foundation of historical background on feasting in the Middle Ages. The barley bread recipe is fantastic!

good collection of recipes, better if each recipe included time period and geographic spread

Recipes with redactions with some history thrown in there

The cookbook would have been greatly enhanced by inclusion of the passages from Austen's works which inspired the recipes contained in it. The book is more interesting from the standpoint of culinary history than from an attempt to provide recipes which modern cooks would wish to prepare. I have not yet figured out how to give 1/2 star ratings, but I'd really rate this as 3.5 stars.

Very approachable "first period cookbook". Gives a good sense of how to get from manuscript to plate. Though some of the modern versions arent quite in line with the original, they work OK, and the information is there to make a good attempt at a "house version". Recommended for the curious cook.

3/26/22