History of food and cooking
Historic texts
The origin of many modern dishes can be traced back to ancient times but there are very few surviving texts, that deal with cooking, written before the year 1000 AD. In many cases where texts exist the recipes and directions they provide are little more than guidelines and assume much knowledge on the part of the cook.
For example the following is a recipe taken from the Forme of Cury, a roll of cookery written around 1390 by the master cooks of King Richard II of England.
Compost.
Take rote of persel, of pasternak, of rafens, scrape hem and waische hem clene. Take rapes & caboches, ypared and icorue. Take an erthen panne with clene water & set it on the fire; cast alle žise žerinne. Whan žey buth boiled cast žerto peeres, & parboile hem wel. Take alle žise thynges vp & lat it kele on a faire cloth. Do žerto salt; whan it is colde, do hit in a vessel; take vyneger & powdour & safroun & do žerto, & lat alle žise thynges lye žerin al nyyt, ožer al day. Take wyne greke & hony, clarified togider; take lumbarde mustard & raisons coraunce, al hoole, & grynde powdour of canel, powdour douce & aneys hole, & fenell seed. Take alle žise thynges & cast togyder in a pot of erthe, & take žerof whan žou wilt & serue forth.
This recipe, which is written in late Middle English, is open to interpretation as it gives no specific quantities and assumes that the reader will know how long certain things need to be cooked, soaked, etc.
You shouldn’t let this deter you from reading old texts concerning cookery, indeed there is a certain degree of fun in taking an old recipe and determining how it might have been prepared.