These essays were presented at the seventeenth Leeds Symposium on Food History, of which this is the fourteenth volume in the series 'Food and Society.' Their common theme is the way in which we cooked our food from the medieval to the modern eras, most especially, how we roasted meats. The authors are distinguished food historians, mostly from the north of England. David Eveleigh discusses the rise of the kitchen range, from the 19th-century coal-fired monsters to the electric and gas cookers of the early 20th century. Ivan Day, in two essays, talks about techniques of roasting. In the first he tells of the ox roast - the open-air celebration with the cooking done on a blazing campfire. In the second he traces the history of the clockwork spit, the final, most domestic version of the open-hearth device that had been driven by dogs or scullions in earlier centuries. Peter Brears gives us the fruits of many years' involvement in the reconstruction of the kitchens at Hampton Court and other Royal Palaces in his account of roasting, specifically the 'baron of beef', in these important locales. The final two chapters discuss aspects of baking rather than roasting. Laura Mason tells of the English reliance on yeast as a raising agent - in the earliest times deriving it from brewing ale, and Susan McClellan Plaisted gives an account of running a masonry wood-fired oven in living-history museums in America, discussing the transmission of cooking techniques from the Old to the New World, and the problems encountered in baking a satisfactory loaf. The book is very generously illustrated, both by photographs of artefacts and reproductions of early prints and engravings that elucidate their purpose and function.

"The Art of Cookery" is the only books of its kind to have come out of an English religious community. It is also that very rare thing, a cookery book of the English 18th-century that has the author's own recipes throughout; nothing seems to have been plagiarized or borrowed from other writers. The Dean of Durham Cathedral, who employed the author, had a lavish grant for entertaining and his generous hospitality meant that his cook had to cater for all levels of society, from canons of the Cathedral with sophisticated tastes such as the gourmand Dr. Jacque Sterne, to tradesmen, poor widows, and those of even more modest status. Thacker's book keeps many pre-Reformation recipes and thus shows the gradual transition in the Cathedral's eating habits. This facsimilie is introduced by the well-known food historian Ivan Day who examines the recipes and reveals the remarkable tradition of ecclesiastical hospitality that survived at Durham for more than eight hundred years.

From the Baroque Era to the Victorian Era, 1650-1850, unprecedented changes took place in the food ways and dining habits of European society. This daily life aspect of history comes alive for students and food enthusiasts as they read and try out these recipes, most translated into English for the first time. There are nearly 200 recipes, organized overall by the mini-periods of the Baroque and Rococo Era, the Reign of Louis XV to the French Revolution, and the reign of Napoleon to the Victorian Era. Author Ivan Day, a renowned food historian who specializes in meticulous recreation of these amazing dishes for museum exhibitions, makes them accessible with clear explanations of techniques and unusual ingredients. Recipes include examples from France, Italy, England, Austria, Germany, Holland, Portugal, Spain, and Scotland, from the simple Salad of Pomegranate from La Varenne Careme's 1651 cookbook to the elaborate Boar's Head in Galantine of Careme's 1833 cookbook. This unique cookbook is a culinary treasure trove to complement all European History library collections.

As Day shows in his narrative and recipes, the principal theme in the story of food during the two centuries is the rapid spread of French fine cooking throughout Europe and its gradual percolation down the social scale. However, despite the domination of French cuisine at higher levels, most nations managed to cling proudly to their own indigenous traditions. A lively introduction explains the dramatic shift in culinary taste led by the exuberant creativity of French cooks. Cookbooks started to emerge from the Paris printing presses after a hundred years of silence. Numerous innovations completely transformed French cuisine and swept away all remnants of lingering medieval taste. There were new efficient cooking techniques for the kitchens of powerful and wealthy. For all, there were new ingredients from New World and new cooking mediums such as the mechanical spit and roasting ranges that made cooking cleaner and less back breaking. The recipes, each with a short explanation, are organized by type of dish. Categories include salads and cold dishes; soups; meat; poultry; fish and seafood; vegetables and fungi; eggs and dairy; sauces; savory pastries; starches, pastas, and legumes; breads and cakes; sweet pastries and puddings; fruit, nuts, and flower preserves; sweets and confections; jellies and ices; and drinks. Occasional sidebars offer period menus of, for example, elaborate feasts. A glossary and an appendix listing suppliers of equipment and ingredients are added features.