Recipes: Introduction

Old time food for the modern kitchen

The History.uk.com recipes section is dedicated to the art of preparing authentic tasting historic food and drink. Every month we will try to add an exciting new recipe to these pages complete with tips and hints for historic cooks. We will explain the best way to prepare the ingredients and give you ideas on how to present the finished product to your guests.

Historic food

We need to begin by defining what we mean by "historic" food and drink. The Romans recorded the first true UK recipes but it was not best documented until polite culture in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

We intend to concentrate on the Middle Ages as they offer so many exciting opportunities to explore "new" tastes and textures. We may also dip into the Roman period and we have some seventeenth and eighteenth century recipes that we also rate highly.

Information on historic cookery

History of recipes
What was the food really like?
Influences and preparation

Our philosophy

As food historians, professionally trained cooks and enthusiastic "foodies", we wanted to eat the same sort of stuff our ancestors cooked.

We have prepared food according to original recipes and methods and then made minor adjustments to quantities and cooking times until we finally arrived at what we believe is an accurate representation of the flavours and textures of medieval cooking.

We set out to develop modern recipes that, as near as possible in a twenty first century kitchen, replicate the way food would have been prepared and served in late medieval times. These "modern" recipes are what you will find on these web pages supported, where possible, by an original text.

Try this easy historic recipe:

Frumenty: "Easy to make" wheat porridge used in medieval times as an accompaniment to meat dishes and also as a breakfast cereal.