The published material on medieval food and food cultures is vast. Below is a small selection of the books on our shelves which we find ourselves coming back to time and again – it’s by no means exhaustive and we’re always happy to hear of recommendations and items to add.
Happy reading!
General Medieval Food History
Brears, Peter. Cooking and Dining in Medieval England. London: Prospect Books, 2008.
Dalby, Andrew. Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000.
Klemettilä, Hannele. The Medieval Kitchen: A Social History with Recipes. London: Reaktion Books, 2012.
Laurioux, Bruno. Une histoire culinaire du Moyen âge. Paris : H. Champion, 2005.
Montanati, Massimo. Medieval Tastes: Food, Cooking and the Table. Translated by Beth Archer Brombert. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.
Scully, Terence. The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1995.
Tigner Holmes, Urban. Daily Living in the Twelfth Century: Based on the Observations of Alexander Neckham in London and Paris. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1952.
Weiss Adamson, Melitta. Food in Medieval Times. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004.
Woolgar, C.M. The Great Household in Late Medieval England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.
Woolgar, C.M., D. Serjeantson, and T. Waldron, eds. Food in Medieval England: Diet and Nutrition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Woolgar, C.M. The Culture of Food in England, 1200-1500. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.
Wine and Beer
Bennett, Judith M. Ale, Beer and Brewsters in England: Women’s Work in a Changing World, 1300-1600. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Rose, Susan. The Wine Trade in Medieval Europe, 1000-1500. London: Bloomsbury, 2011.
Unger, Richard W. Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.
Recipe Collections
Hieatt, Constance, Brenda Hosington and Sharon Butler. Pleyn Delight: Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks, 2nd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.
Hieatt, Constance, ed. and trans. The Culinary Recipes of Medieval England. London: Prospect Books, 2013.
Greco, Gina L., and Christine M. Rose, trans. The Good Wife’s Guide: Le Ménagier de Paris, A Medieval Household Book. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009.
Redon, Odile, Françoise Sabban, and Silvano Serventi. The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy. Trans. Edward Schneider. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Scully, Terence. The Viandier of Taillevent: An Edition of Extant Manuscripts. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1988.
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