The Tudor Cookbook: From Gilded Peacock to Calves' Feet Pie Hardcover – 15 Mar. 2016

A wonderful little book made for the perfect Christmas gift

Interesting reading, even if you don't make any of the dishes.

Arrived on time, a good book.

The Tudor Cookbook by Terry Breverton is a collection of recipes from real Tudor sources. Of course, they are largely aimed at well-to-do households, as most ordinary people wouldn't have owned cookbooks, couldn't read and apparently existed mostly on poor quality bread and pottage with very little meat. However, this book does give a fascinating insight into the way wealthier people ate and what dictated the sorts of meals they had. These are real recipes with Tudor ingredients, cooking methods and language, so you'd be hard-pushed to recreate them - and indeed you probably wouldn't want to, as a lot of them are either weirdy unpleasant or absurdly labour-intensive. One thing that really stands out is how sweet a lot of the main courses are - lots of the meat and fish dishes have sugar added to them, and sugar was of course expensive at the time. It's also interesting to see how religious considerations played a role in what people ate: there are recipes here designed to get around Friday meat bans and fasting for Lent. I read this almost cover to cover and learned a lot. Sometimes the transcribing of the recipes in terms of what is left as written originally and what's modernised seems a little inconsistent, as do the notes from the author, and it would have been nice to see more pictures of the dishes (which the introduction says have been trialled), but other than that it's an informative and entertaining read for anyone interested in food.

Very interesting read, haven't yet tried any of the recipes but I would like to give it a go. Delivered on time, great price, exactly as seller described.