Welcome!

So many students (or their mothers)  have written to me requesting information about Elizabethan and Renaissance cooking that I've put together this page of references and links to help you find pertinent material.  I hope it is of some use to you.

Index:

Frequently Asked Questions
Suppliers
Links
Bibliography
Recipes
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Frequently Asked questions:
 

• "Her teacher said they didn't have chocolate in those days..."
• Yes, they did have chocolate, but it was served as a beverage with hot pepper. (See http://jducoeur.org/justin/chocolate.txt for excerpts from a 1652 treatise about chocolate.)

• "Any ideas where I could get recipes/typical foods and drink for a Shakespearean breakfast?"
• Breakfast was not a major meal at that time. It was little more that a piece of bread in wine or ale, and maybe a little leftover cold meat pie. The main meal of the day was dinner (lunch).  Here is a book that may help you:

READ, Jan and Maite Manjón. "The Great British Breakfast". 1981  A history of breakfasts from mediaeval times to its eighteenth and nineteenth century heyday. Illustrated.

• "I need information on food and eating habits of the Elizabethan time period."
• One of the biggest differences between Elizabethan times and earlier times is the expanded use of sugar. The Elizabethans seemed to be addicted to the stuff. New World foods and citrus fruits were also popular (most likely because they were novelty items and conspicuous consumption -- showing off to one's friends-- was very important), although the methods of preparation were frequently quite different than what you would expect today. I've posted several pages of Culinary gleanings from Gerard's Herbal, where you can see some of the foods that were eaten, and how they were eaten.  Also, see Links below.

• "Please send me a cookie recipe."
• They didn't use baking soda or baking powder back then, so you won't find a cookie recipe in the modern sense. Here is something close:

To make fine Cakes. Take a quantity of fine wheate Flower, and put it in an earthen pot. Stop it close and set it in an Oven, and bake it as long as you would a Pasty of Venison, and when it is baked it will be full of clods. Then searce your flower through a fine sercer. Then take clouted Creame or sweet butter, but Creame is best: then take sugar, cloves, Mace, saffron and yolks of eggs, so much as wil seeme to season your flower. Then put these things into the Creame, temper all together. Then put thereto your flower. So make your cakes. The paste will be very short; therefore make them very little. Lay paper under them. (From The Widowes Treasury by John Partridge, 1585.)

A searce is a sieve.  The pre-baked flour will be very hard and lumpy; you will need to rub it through a sieve in order to use it.  Clouted creame is fresh unpasteurized cream that has been allowed to sit in an earthenware pan near the hearth overnight.  The cream forms a thick wrinkled yellow crust called clouted or clotted cream.  If you don't have clouted cream, use butter.  Here is a worked out recipe for you:

To every 3 cups of sifted baked flour, take the following:
1 1/2 cups butter
1 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon clove powder
1/4 teaspoon mace powder
1/2 pinch saffron, crumbled
3 egg yolks

Preheat oven to 350° F.
In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar.  Add the spices and egg yolks, and beat to mix thoroughly.  Add the flour, and beat until smooth.  Use a non-stick cookie sheet, or line a cookie sheet with baking parchment.  Take the dough, 1 level teaspoonful at a time, and roll into small balls with your hands.  (Resist the temptation to make them larger -- they won’t cook in the middle if they’re too big.)  Flatten the balls slightly, and place them 2 inches apart on the cookie sheet.  Bake for 9 minutes, or until the cookies are puffed and golden around the edges.  Remove from oven and cool on wire racks.

Makes about 6 dozen cookies.

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Suppliers
 

The House on the Hill - They carry Rosewater, and much more.

Acanthus Books carries lots of rare and unusual cookbooks. Send email to: Acanthusbk@aol.com

Francesco Sirene - Spicer. Look here for all your hard-to-find spices.

Food Heritage Press - a treasure trove of old cookbooks.

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Links

Medieval & Renaissance Food Homepage

Stefan's Florilegium - click on "food" or "cooking", you will find several files about medieval & renaissance cooking. Look under "desserts", "sweets", and "cookies". There are a few recipes there.

Elizabethan Homebrewing by Tofi Kerthjalfadsson.

Chocolate: or, An Indian Drinke. - Excerpts from a 1652 book.

Thomas Gloning's bibliography of cookery, wine, etc.

Culinary gleanings from Gerard's Herbal

Elizabeth's Household

Elizabethan Food and Drink

The Renaissance at the Dinner Table By Dr. Alessandro Giacomello
 

In The historie of fovre-footed beastes ... : Collected out of all the volumes of Conradvs Gesner, and all other writers to this present day. London:  Printed by W. Iaggard, 1607. Topsell, Edward, 1572-1625?

"Briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia."  Latin.  Hariot, Thomas, 1560-1621. Admiranda narratio fida tamen, de commodis et incolarum ritibus Virgini : nuper admodum ab Anglis, qui à Dn. Richardo Greinvile equestris ordinis viro eò in coloniam anno M.D. LXXXV. deducti sunt invent, sumtus faciente Dn. VValtero Raleigh equestris ordi.  Francoforti ad Moenum : Typis Ioannis Wecheli, sumtibus vero Theodori de Bry, [1590] MDXC.
 

Click here for more culinary history links.

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A Short Bibliography:

Acanthus Books and Food Heritage Press both have reprints of so many wonderful period cookbooks, that I'm sending you there to read the titles. I won't bother listing them all here.

A Propre new booke of Cokery / declaryng what maner of meates bee best in ceason for all tymes of [th]e yere and how thei ought to bee dressed and serued at the table bothe for flessh daies and fisshe daies with a newe addicion / veri necessarye for all them that delighteth in cokery. Imprinted at London in Paules churchyard by Richard Lant and Richarde Bankes. Cum priuilegio ad imprimendum solum. M.D.XLV.  Transcription

A BOOK OF COOKRYE   Very Necessary for   all such as delight  therin.  Gathered by A. W.  And now newlye enlarged with the serving in of the Table.  With the proper Sauces to each of them convenient.  AT LONDON  Printed by Edward Allde. 1591.

Brett, Gerard. Dinner is Served: A History of Dining in England, 1400-1900. 1968.

Byrne, M. St. Clare. Elizabethan Life in Town and Country. 1961.

Culpeper, Nicholas. The English Physitian Herball , 1652. The text of this is online.

Emmison, Frederick G. Tudor Foods and Pastimes: Life at Ingatestone Hall. 1964.

Gerard, John. The Herball or General Historie of Plantes. 1633. Recently reprinted by at least 3 different people.

Lorwin, Madge. Dining With William Shakespeare. Atheneum, New York, 1976.

Sass, Lorna. To the Queen's Taste. Metropolitan Museum of Art Press, New York, 1976.

Wilson, C. Anne, ed. Banquetting Stuffe, The fare and social background of the Tudor and Stuart banquet. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1991.
 
 

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Here are a few easy Elizabethan & Renaissance recipes I think you'll enjoy.  Read these phonetically, and you shouldn't have too much trouble. Verjuice is the sour juice of unripe fruit; you may substitute cider vinegar. A coffin is a pie crust.

How to make Fartes of Portingale. Take a peece of a leg of mutton. Mince it smal and season it with cloves, mace, pepper, and salt, and Dates minced with currants: then roll it into round rolles, and so into little balles, and so boyle them in a little beef broth and so serve them foorth. (The Good Huswives Handmaid for Cookerie, 1588.)

To roast olives of veal. You shall take a leg of veal and cut the flesh from the bones, and cut it out into thin long slices; then take sweet herbs and the white parts of scallions, and chop them well together with the yolks of eggs, then roll it up within the slices of veal, and so spit them and roast them; then boil verjuice, butter, sugar, cinnamon, currants, and sweet herbs together, and, being seasoned with a little salt, serve the olives up upon that sauce with salt cast over them. (The English Hus-wife, by Gervase Markham, 1615.)

To make Pies that the Birds may be alive in them, and flie out when it is cut up. - click to view this recipe.

To Make Ipocras With Red Wine Take a gallon of wine, three ounces of cinamon, two ounces of slic't ginger, a quarter of an ounce of cloves, an ounce of mace, twenty corns of pepper, an ounce of nutmegs, three pound of sugar, and two quarts of cream. (From The Accomplisht Cook, by Robert May, 1660.)

The [sweet] Potato roots... being tosted in the embers they lose much of their windinesse, especially being eaten sopped in wine. Of these roots may be made conserues no lesse toothsome, wholesome, and dainty than of the flesh of Quinces... They are vsed to be eaten rosted in the ashes. Some when they be so rosted infuse them and sop them in Wine; and others to giue them the greater grace in eating, do boyle them with prunes, and so eate them. And likewise others dresse them (being first rosted) with Oyle, Vineger, and salt, euerie man according to his owne taste and liking. Notwithstanding howsoeuer they bee dressed, they comfort, nourish, and strengthen the body, procuring bodily lust, and that with greedinesse. (Gerard's Herball , 1633 edition.)

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