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Banqueting Stuffe To Go
I have just finished making a table full of early modern period sweetmeats for a BBC production which will chart the arrival of Renaissance culture in England. It will all be dispatched in some...
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Towards A True Twelfth Cake
A group of sugar cavalry officers parade round the Prince of Wales Feathers on top of a Regency period twelfth cakeIt seems ages since I had enough spare time to post on this blog. Since we are...
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My 2014 Cookery Courses
Learn to make a Yorkshire Christmas Pie on my A Taste of Christmas Past CourseBelow is the course diary for the period cookery courses I am offering in 2014. Click on the individual links to read more...
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2014 - Some Interesting Food History Conferences and Lectures
Twenty-Eighth Leeds Symposium on Food History and TraditionsSaturday 17th May 2014JACKS AND JAGGERSKitchen Technology in England from 1600 to the Second World War A Selection of Early Modern Period...
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Mrs Agnes Marshall's Cucumber Ice Creams
Agnes Marshall's Parisian Cucumber Cream served on a base of nougat paste and pistachios glazed with boiled sugar. The highly realistic cucunber is flavoured with finely chopped angelica, pistachios...
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An Early Modern Christmas Party
Or The Pastry KunstkammerThe Burghley Nef. Nautilus shell with parcel-gilt silver mounts, raised, chased, engraved and cast, and pearls. France 1527-1528 Courtesy Victoria and Albert MuseumChristmas is...
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Some Christmas Night Caps
My favourite Christmas tipple - Punch Royal - but why the orange peel? Recipe and explanation below.I was recently given a small job by a television production company to check the historical accuracy...
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Royal Jelly
Jim Broadbent as King William IV having a row with the Duchess of Kent in front of an assemblage of some of my Georgian dessert food, including some Savoy cakes and a moulded ice cream in the form of a...
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Chef Comes To Pemberley
And Throws His Teddy Bear Out Of The Pram!A still from a kitchen scene in Death Comes to Pemberley, a BBC drama production based on the novel by P.D. JamesEarlier this year I was invited to dress a...
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To Roast a Pound of Butter
Some butter rotates 'a good distance from the fire' on a wooden spit in an abortive attempt to roast a pound of butter according to instructions from William Ellis, The Family Companion (London: 1750)....
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Macedoine Jelly Revisited
A couple of glamorous victorian entremets in my kitchenJust a quickie. I have just spent a couple of days filming with a BBC crew making a number of items of period food. Yesterday I put together a...
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A Medieval Meal for Real
The roasting range in the kitchen of Gainsborough Hall, probably being used for the first time in four hundred years as it was intended, for roasting a full range of meats and poultry for a high status...
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To Roast a Pike
A pike roasted in front of the fire according to the directions in Elizabeth Birkett Here Booke 1699. It is stuffed with pickled herring, herbs, spices, anchovies, butter and garlic.I am currently...
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Ryce Puddings in Scoured Guts
Rice puddings boiled in skins made from Gervase Markham's 1615 recipe (see below)When I was a child, I frequently heard the popular idiom, 'he could n't knock the skin off a rice pudding' - usually...
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A Victorian Altar to Curry and Other Events
A high Victorian table at Hutton-in-the-Forest (Photo: Cressida Vane)I have been so busy over the past few months, that I have had no time at all to post on this blog. I have really missed it. So very...
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Sucket and See
A selection of 'wet suckets' - citrus fruits preserved in syrup. Clockwise from top left - green orange, lemon, bitter orange and citron succade on a wooden trencher with a Tudor fruit knife (ca.1560)...
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Merry Christmas - This Year's Twelfth Cake
I have not posted much on this blog for a long time. I have had a busy and rather difficult year. I just wanted to wish all my followers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. So here are a couple of...
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Pastry Jiggers and Pastry Prints - a marvellous new book by Michael Finlay
Front dust jacket of Michael Finlay's new book. Photo © Michael Finlay.A few years ago, I worked on a television series with a well-known celebrity chef. In one of the programmes I constructed an...
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Forthcoming Events
Late eighteenth century dessert table at the Gardiner Museum, TorontoI have just had another extremely busy year and have had no time at all to contribute any new posts to this blog. However, as I have...
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A Christmas Medley
Merry Christmas Everybody - Unless you live in 1652!The changing face of Christmas food fascinates me. These days English supermarket shelves are full of exotic delights like panetonne and stolen, both...
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The Grand Feast
At the School of Artisan FoodFrançois Marin's intensely flavoured 'restaurant', a restorative quintessence which gave its name to the early Parisian eating houses of the same name. Photo: Miriam...
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It is not too late to wish you all a Merry Christmas
A Twelfth Cake as not seen on TV!Recently I have watched a lot on British television (and heard even more on the radio) about Twelfth Night, the so-called last day of Christmas. But according to the...
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Silent Culinary Witnesses
Behind the sugar moulded torso of Neptune and his trident is an almond cake, decorated with ornamental bands of snow sugar and surmounted by a dragant figure of Neptune. The illustration is in Conrad...
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The Edible Monument - Detroit Institute of Arts
In 2015 I was commissioned by the Getty Research Institute to produce a replica of a sugar table centrepiece designed by the eighteenth century French cook and confectioner Menon. The designs first...
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The Jonah Mould - Or Size Matters
Visitors to my kitchen frequently remark on the large number of antique jelly moulds scattered around the room. I usually explain that just a few of them were actually used for turning out jellies and...
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