Medieval Food and Culture
The Blackfriars / Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies bi-annual series of talks and themed lunches.
Medieval Food Lecture and Lunch
May 2024
Keep your eyes peeled for the next talk in our long-running lecture and lunch series. Blackfriars will host, in partnership with Durham University’s IMEMS.
WHERE: Blackfriars Banquet Hall
TIMES: 11am for 11.30am start
Cost: £35.00 (student discount – please inquire via Blackfriars)
Ivan Day – The Appetite and the Eye: Understanding the Aesthetics of Food
Hosted by Ivan Day, a well-known independent food historian who is celebrated for his recreations of British and European period table settings.
Ivan combines genuine museum objects with historic food to clarify our understanding of how our ancestors dined at table. His preferred methodology is to create dishes, not only from early recipes, but to use the techniques and equipment of a given period.
In this illustrated lecture Ivan is going to discuss his philosophy and approach to the interpretation of both the written sources and material culture of food. He will focus particularly on the changing aesthetics of food from the late medieval period to the industrial revolution.
The Blackfriars / Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies lectures and lunch series has been running since 2012. Every May and November we gather at Blackfriars for a talk and a suitably-themed lunch. Talks range from local interest and the history of the priory, to etiquette across medieval society, literary depictions of Viking feasting, the curious links between dining and bathing, the science of food and taste, and what peasants, hermits, and religious societies ate. Lunches offer the opportunity for the Eat Medieval team to explore new dishes with the chefs and new interpretations of the recipes. Cutting-edge research for public consumption!
‘Really changed my perceptions of what and how food was eaten in the past.’
Feedback from regular attendees
Previous Talks and Speakers
| Ivan Day | The Appetite and the Eye: Understanding the Aesthetics of Food |
| Andrew Jotischky | The Inedible Middle Ages |
| Amanda Herbert | New Worlds, New Foods: 1492 and the Transformation of the Medieval Diet |
| Aleks Pluskowski | Food Culture After the Baltic Crusade |
| Eric Cambridge | Reconstructing Medieval Blackfriars |
| Giles E. M. Gasper & Andy Hook | Eat Medieval: Heritage and Hospitality, Medieval and Modern |
| Fiona Whelan | Did manners maketh the medieval man? Etiquette at the twelfth-century dining table |
| Debby Banham | The Early English Bread Project: the Making and Meaning of Bread in Early Medieval England |
| Adrian Green | Blackfriars and the Newcastle Craft Guilds |
| Giles E. M. Gasper | The Science of Food in the Middle Ages: Taste, Pleasure and the Senses |
| Christian Liddy | Common Rights and Natural Resources: the 1217 Charter of the Forest in Historical Perspective |
| Daniel Newman | Food of the Arabian Nights: An Introduction to Medieval Arab Cuisine |
| Elizabeth Archibald | Dining and Bathing for Health |
| Iona McCleery | The Healthy Medieval Diet |
| Eleanor Barraclough | A Feast of Trolls: Feeding, Fighting and Fornicating with the Trolls of Nordic Folklore |
| Peter Brears | Ettiquette in the Middle Ages |
| Andrew Jotischky | A Hermit’s Cookbook: Monks, Food and Fasting in the Middle Ages |
| John Clay | Horses for Courses: Food and Faith in Early Medieval Times |
| Chris Woolgar | Cooking and the Peasantry Ate in Late Medieval England |
| Michael Prestwich | Castles and their Food |
| Giles E. M. Gasper | Eggs Benedict: Monks and their Food |
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