A Boke of Gode Cookery

James L. Matterer has been interested in medieval cookery for around 20 years and his site seeks to enthuse the rest of us through meticulous research, high academic standards, and a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour. The graphics and design are brilliant, and the text is fascinating. Speed is good, and even the huge image gallery comes up reasonably quickly. Matterer makes clear what is authentic and what is not, and the recipes are printed as originally published, followed by a translation, then a version of the dish written in modern recipe style. It can be a little confusing, though, as there are many overlapping sections and some seem to have more than one name; for example, the Image Collection is also called A Feast for the Eyes.

Special Features

Modern Recipes for Beginners Medieval in style, rather than strictly authentic (although some recipes are). It's designed as an easy introduction to the flavours of the period, so ingredients are readily available and cooking techniques are simple. Some recipes also come with a nutritional analysis.

A Boke of Gode Cookery Recipes

Matterer's comprehensive archive of annotated recipes from the medieval period, complete with literary and contemporary cooking translations. Some include rare, strange-sounding ingredients, others are remarkably like what you ate last time you had friends over for dinner.

Chaucerian Cookery

An exploration of food as a literary device in The Canterbury Tales. A biography, Chaucerian feast menu, and recipes complete the study.



How to Cook Medieval Advice on which ingredients are appropriate for authentic medieval cooking. Actually, it's not hard to figure out, unless you're American: anything native to the New World was unavailable in Europe during the Middle Ages. Consequently, the website's motto is 'No turkey legs'.

Image Collection

Around 200 authentic images in six galleries are available for downloading, which is great but, given that there are so many, a more meaningful categorisation would be useful.

Links

Hundreds of sites are listed on related topics - not just food but medieval and renaissance literature, music, clothes, castles, mail-order retailers and so on.

Other features

The Newe Boke of Olde Cokery is written by another scholar, Rudd Rayfield, and the Historical Cookery Page is a contributory section including articles from experts on food in other time periods.