Agricultural History Review, Volume 65 Part 1 (2017), p. 147

This is another enticing and inspirational book by Christopher Woolgar. The chapter titles alone are enough to draw us in: Food Cultures; Cooking in the Countryside; the Culture of Drink and Drinking; Bread, Meat and Dairy Foods; Sauces and Spices, Sugars and Preserves; Gardens, Wild Food, Fish and Hunting; Civic Food Culture and the Guilds; Foodways and Monastic Institutions; the Elite Table; Cooks and Kitchens, Dietetics and Food; Hunger and Famine; Food and Popular Mentalities.

Drawing upon a wide range of sources and focusing in turn upon various aspects of food and drink, we are led into a garden of delights – and one where we regularly encounter rich and poor, young and old, women and men. Each of the 12 studies is given greater depth by the different sources upon which Woolgar draws. The introductory section uses the widest range of sources together with references to the works of others. In sharp contrast, the single most significant source for ‘Cooking in the Countryside’ is the coroners’ rolls. These are balanced by an appropriate (and more cheerful) leavening from other sources, which serve to give a vivid depiction of family life. By integrating his work into a series of wider views and detailed discussions, Woolgar holds our interest and leads us up hill and down dale.

The chapter on ‘Bread, Meat and Dairy Foods’ allows a discussion of the changes in butchery practices that emerged after the Black Death. These included the role of women in preparing offal for sale together with their involvement in providing street food. Here we read about a case found within the records of Durham Cathedral Priory, where a series of women (at least some of whom were linked to the men employed in the kitchens there) apparently ran a business based upon the conversion of offal and entrails from the Priory kitchen into food for sale. This scenario is intriguing and must lead to the possibility that such economic activity by women was widespread and suggests that we should be actively seeking the evidence. (Equally intriguing is the employment of men within religious establishments for women where – on the face of it – their presence also seems inappropriate.) The role of servants is explored further in the next chapter, which gives a broader discussion of kitchen equipment, cooking techniques and the changes in both techniques and styles of food preparation that developed during the fifteenth century in both religious and elite contexts. Of particular interest is the extended discussion of the household of George, Duke of Clarence (the younger brother of Edward IV) whose legendary end in a butt of Malmsey still resonates.

The penultimate chapter discusses the major subsistence crises of the wider fourteenth century and considers the background levels of hunger against which such events as the Great Famine of 1315–18 must be set. The varied responses to individual pleas for help and the decisions made by the authorities in considering how to address the wider problems are not necessarily different to those currently faced. It would seem that a willingness to demonize the poor and suggest that they are the authors of their own downfall is not a modern phenomenon – but who thought it was?

The final chapter, although short, covers some very important aspects and points towards areas of research which should repay the effort of further investigation. Not least in significance is Woolgar’s comment that ‘There is much more to be learned about cooks and cooking, and we cannot now do so without understanding the importance of women in this process’ (p. 236) – cry hallelujah and amen.