History of food and cooking

The origin of many modern dishes can be traced back to ancient times, but there are very few surviving texts written before the year 1000 AD that deal with cooking. In many cases where texts exist the recipes and directions they provide are little more than guidelines and assume much knowledge on the part of the cook.

For example the following is a recipe taken from the , a roll of cookery written around 1390 by the master cooks of King .

:Compost.

:Take rote of persel, of pasternak, of rafens, scrape hem and waische hem clene. Take rapes & caboches, ypared and icorue. Take an erthen panne with clene water & set it on the fire; cast alle ?ise ?erinne. Whan ?ey buth boiled cast ?erto peeres, & parboile hem wel. Take alle ?ise thynges vp & lat it kele on a faire cloth. Do ?erto salt; whan it is colde, do hit in a vessel; take vyneger & powdour & safroun & do ?erto, & lat alle ?ise thynges lye ?erin al nyyt, o?er al day. Take wyne greke & hony, clarified togider; take lumbarde mustard & raisons coraunce, al hoole, & grynde powdour of canel, powdour douce & aneys hole, & fenell seed. Take alle ?ise thynges & cast togyder in a pot of erthe, & take ?erof whan ?ou wilt & serue forth.

This recipe, which is written in late , is open to interpretation as it gives no specific quantities and assumes that the reader will know how long certain things need to be cooked, soaked, etc.

You shouldnt let this deter you from reading old texts concerning cookery; indeed there is a certain degree of fun in taking an old recipe and determining how it might have been prepared.