Blancmange is a sweet dessert popular throughout Europe commonly made with milk or cream and sugar, thickened with rice flour, gelatin, corn starch, or Irish moss, and often flavoured with almonds.
A recipe is a set of instructions that describes how to prepare or make something, especially a dish of prepared food. A sub-recipe or subrecipe is a recipe for an ingredient that will be called for in the instructions for the main recipe.
Lasagna, also known as lasagne, is a type of pasta, possibly one of the oldest types, made in very wide, flat sheets. The same-named Italian dish is made of stacked layers of lasagna alternating with fillings such as ragù, béchamel sauce, vegetables, cheeses, and seasonings and spices. The dish may be topped with grated cheese, which becomes melted during baking. Typically cooked pasta is assembled with the other ingredients and then baked in an oven. The resulting baked pasta is cut into single-serving square or rectangular portions.
The Forme of Cury is an extensive 14th-century collection of medieval English recipes. Although the original manuscript is lost, the text appears in nine manuscripts, the most famous in the form of a scroll with a headnote citing it as the work of "the chief Master Cooks of King Richard II". The name The Forme of Cury is generally used for the family of recipes rather than any single manuscript text. It is among the oldest extant English cookery books, and the earliest known to mention olive oil, gourds, and spices such as mace and cloves.
A cookbook or cookery book is a kitchen reference containing recipes.
Apicius, also known as De re culinaria or De re coquinaria, is a collection of Roman cookery recipes, which may have been compiled in the fifth century CE, or earlier. Its language is in many ways closer to Vulgar than to Classical Latin, with later recipes using Vulgar Latin added to earlier recipes using Classical Latin.
Le Viandier is a recipe collection generally credited to Guillaume Tirel, alias Taillevent. However, the earliest version of the work was written around 1300, about 10 years before Tirel's birth. The original author is unknown, but it was common for medieval recipe collections to be plagiarized, complemented with additional material and presented as the work of later authors.
Pseudo-Apuleius is the name given in modern scholarship to the author of a 4th-century herbal known as Pseudo-Apuleius Herbarius or Herbarium Apuleii Platonici. The author of the text apparently wished readers to think that it was by Apuleius of Madaura (124–170 CE), the Roman poet and philosopher, but modern scholars do not believe this attribution. Little or nothing else is known of Pseudo-Apuleius.
Medieval cuisine includes foods, eating habits, and cooking methods of various European cultures during the Middle Ages, which lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. During this period, diets and cooking changed less than they did in the early modern period that followed, when those changes helped lay the foundations for modern European cuisines.
More or less distinct areas in medieval Europe where certain foodstuffs dominated can be discerned. In the British Isles, northern France, the Low Countries, the northern German-speaking areas, Scandinavia and the Baltic the climate was generally too harsh for the cultivation of grapes and olives. In the south, wine was the common drink for both rich and poor alike while beer was the commoner's drink in the north and wine an expensive import. Citrus fruits and pomegranates were common around the Mediterranean. Dried figs and dates occurred quite frequently in the north, but were used rather sparingly in cooking.
Martino da Como, was an Italian 15th-century culinary expert who was unequalled in his field at the time and could be considered the Western world's first celebrity chef. He made his career in Italy and was the chef at the Roman palazzo of the papal chamberlain ("camerlengo"), the Patriarch of Aquileia. Martino was applauded by his peers, earning him the epitaph of the prince of cooks. His book Libro de Arte Coquinaria is considered a landmark in Italian gastronomic literature and a historical record of the transition from medieval to Renaissance cuisine.
The Danish Census Book or the Danish book of land taxation dates from the 13th century and consists of a number of separate manuscripts. The original manuscripts are now housed in the Danish National Archives (Rigsarkivet) in Copenhagen.
Henrik Harpestræng was a Danish botanical and medical author. He was a canon at the Roskilde Cathedral. His name literally means harp string. His greatest work was an urtebog, written in Danish. The book consists of 150 chapters dealing with plants and plant parts. The main body of text is probably translations from two Latin works, De Viribus Herbarum by a person who calls himself Aemilius Macer, but is rather Odo Magdunensis, and De gradibus liber by Constantinus Africanus. However, there are a good many sections of which Henrik Harpestræng is undoubtedly the original author. The book is also an invaluable source for Danish medieval plant names. The best preserved copy of this manuscript dates from the 13th century - now kept in Stockholm.
The first Nordic Cookbook Museum is located in Måltidens hus, Grythyttan, Sweden. The museum was inaugurated on 17 March 2000 and is operated by the Grythyttan School of Hospitality, Culinary Arts & Meal Science.
De honesta voluptate et valetudine was the first cookbook ever printed. Written c. 1465 by Bartolomeo Platina; it first appeared between 1470 and 1475 in Rome, and in 1475 in Venice. Written in Latin, it was largely a translation of recipes by Martino da Como from his Libro de Arte Coquinaria. The book was frequently reprinted over the next century, and translated into French, German, and Italian.
Þjalar-Jóns saga, also known as Saga Jóns Svipdagssonar ok Eireks forvitna is a medieval Icelandic saga defined variously as a romance-saga and a legendary saga. The earliest manuscript, Holm. perg. 6 4to, dates from around the first quarter of the fifteenth century, and the saga is thought to be from the fourteenth century.
Utilis Coquinario is an English cookery book written in Middle English in the late fourteenth or very early fifteenth century. The title has been translated as "Useful for the Kitchen". The text is contained in the Hans Sloane collection of manuscripts in the British Library and is numbered Sloane MS 468.
Constance Bartlett Hieatt was an American scholar with a broad interest in medieval languages and literatures, including Old Norse literature, Anglo-Saxon prosody and literature, and Middle English language, literature, and culture. She was an editor and translator of Karlamagnús saga, of Beowulf, and a scholar of Geoffrey Chaucer. She was particularly known as one of the world's foremost experts in English medieval cooking and cookbooks, and authored and co-authored a number of important books considered essential publications in the field.
Oscar Albert Johnsen was a Norwegian historian. He published a number of books on historical topics.
Älplermagronen is a dish from the Alpine regions of Switzerland, consisting of pasta, potatoes, cream, cheese, and onions. The name is made up of "Älpler" as a designation for the Alpine herder and "Magronen", which was taken as a loan word from the Italian word maccheroni.
