The Eat Medieval team are really looking forward to our next course, which starts in 9 days (we do have places left and there is still plenty of time to book). It’s been fascinating to explore the recipes and their collections over the last few months. We’ve learnt a lot – the balancing of sweet and savoury flavours continues as a constant theme in medieval cuisine. We’ve been thinking a lot of about seasonality, especially in the
context of global access to foodstuffs but focusing on what is available in a particular locality. And also on what different ingredients or substitutes mean for the ways in which these dishes from hundreds of years ago can be brought to life. Andy and Giles have been experimenting with heating up cold wine with hot iron – as you’ll see from the clip below!
And we have all of our other team members taking their part too – we’ve been thinking about the linguistic elements of the recipes, in this case Middle English, Middle French, Anglo-Norman, and medieval Catalan. One new feature for the Easter course is audio recordings of the original recipes, and these from David Thomson, Charlotte Spencer, and Alba Petit-Castellví. We’ve been broadening the range of talks as well, from history and liturgy from Giles and Sigbjørn Sønnesyn, to bio-archaeology from Alba, and Viking Sagas from Peaky (Gailann Riven Peake). There will be much to enjoy and we can’t wait to share.
eatmedieval 
I’m really looking forward to this too. Good to see you practising the red-hot poker technique! It would never have occurred to me to use a sharpening steel in lieu of a poker, but obviously it works . . .
I see that Viande de Chypre in Lent is on the menu. At last year’s Oxford symposium the American food historian William Woys Weaver gave a paper laying out his theory that the Libellus de Arte Coquinaria isn’t, as has usually been thought, a ‘Northern cookery book’, but a northern translation of a book of royal Cypriot cuisine from the Lusignan court. He said that he had a book on the subject in the pipeline, and was planning to publish within the year, but I can’t find any word of it online. Could have been thrown off schedule by Covid, of course. But it should be really interesting when it comes!
Hi Victoria, wonderful to have your company again, and that is very interesting to learn – I will keep a close eye for that!