This is a facsimile of a book first published in 1755 by the owner of a cookery school in Edinburgh. It is provided with an historical introduction by Peter Brears who places the work in the context of what we know about early Scottish cookery literature as well as the particular context of this book, found in the library of Paxton House, a mid-18th century Adam mansion in the Scottish borders. It is a useful marker of the state of Scottish cookery at the time, as well as full of excellent and enticing recipes. It is published in collaboration with The Paxton Trust, the present owners of Paxton House.

Peter Brears has a long acquaintance with jellies in every guise. He was fed them in childhood, he turned to curating their moulds and associated artefacts while director of York and Leeds museums, he has made them for innumerable historical food shows and events. And jelly is a much bigger thing than some packet from the supermarket mixed with boiling water. In the first place, it was not factory-made gelatine that did the setting, but any number of ingenious adaptations of kitchen materials and ingredients. In the second, it was not just a simple clear, coloured solid, but an optical prism to show off and transform the foods contained within it. It was the old cooks' greatest resource for introducing colour, variety and delight into the table display. The book sketches in the history of jellies, particularly in England, and discusses their place within a meal; gives several recipes based on the various setting agents (carrageen, gelatine, isinglass) and also for cereal moulds (flummery, tapioca, semolina, rice, cornflour, etc.); describes how jellies may be assembled by layering, embedding, lining and inclusion of fruit, nuts, gold, etc.; and gives an excellent illustrated account of the various forms of jelly moulds.

The history of medieval food and cookery has received a fair amount of attention from the point of view of recipes (of which many survive)and of the general context of feasts and feasting. It has never, as yet, been studied with an eye to the real mechanics of food production and service: the equipment used, the household organisation, the architectural arrangements for kitchens, store-rooms, pantries, larders, cellars, and domestic administration. This new work by Peter Brears, perhaps Britains foremost expert on the historical kitchen, looks at these important elements of cooking and dining. He also subjects the many surviving documents relating to food service household ordinances, regulations and commentaries to critical study in an attempt to reconstruct the precise rituals and customs of dinner. An underlying intention is to rehabilitate the medieval Englishman as someone with a nice appreciation of food and cookery, decent manners, and a delicate sense of propriety and seemliness. To dispel the myth, that is, of medieval feasting as an orgy of gluttony and bad manners, usually provided with meat that has gone slightly off, masked by liberal additions of heady spices. A series of chapters looks at the cooking departments in large households: the counting house, dairy, brewhouse, pastry, boiling house and kitchen. These are illustrated by architectural perspectives of surviving examples in castles and manor houses throughout the land. Then there are chapters dealing with the various sorts of kitchen equipment: fires, fuel, pots and pans. Sections are then devoted to recipes and types of food cooked. The recipes are those which have been used and tested by Peter Brears in hundreds of demonstrations to the public and cooking for museum displays. Finally there are chapters on the service of dinner (the service departments including the buttery, pantry and ewery) and the rituals that grew up around these. Here, Peter Brears has drawn a wonderful strip cartoon of the serving of a great feast (the washing of hands, the delivery of napery, the tasting for poison, etc.) which will be of permanent utility to historical re-enactors who wish to get their details right. Peter Brears was formerly director of the museums at York and Leeds and has worked all his life in the field of domestic history. He has written extensively on traditional foods and cookery in Yorkshire, as well as a groundbreaking illustrated catalogue of domestic and farmhouse materials in Torquay Museum. He supervised the reconstruction of several important historical kitchens, including those at Hampton Court, Ham House, Cowdray Castle and Belvoir Castle

There has been no serious consideration of local food in England. Most available material is lightweight, not very informative, and a waste of time for serious students. Prospect Books is about to change this, in the first instance with respect to the north country. Last year Peter Brears published Traditional Food in Northumbria (Excellent Press). This title has now been taken on by Prospect Books. The next county for treatment is Yorkshire, the author's home. He has already written on this subject (John Donald, 1987) but this new work is double the length, with many more illustrations and supporting material. The book opens with a survey of the various economic and social groups in the county. progresses to a study of cooking, fuel and installations, then concentrates in a series of single subject chapters on staple foods - porridge, oatcake, bread, meat, fish, puddings, and cakes. There then follows chapters on dairy products and drinks, and closes with a folkloric survey of feats, fairs and calendar customers, and rites of passage such as headwashings, weddings and funerals. This is a book that every Yorkshireman needs. It will be as essential to the present-day resident, as to the vast number of the Yorkshire diaspora. And it will be very welcome to those who have felt the acute lack of any proper study of English food over the last few decades.

The Boke of Keruynge is a handbook or manual for well-born boys in Tudor times who had to learn how to behave at court. They were often sent to court or to a great house at an early age to be instructed, as was the experience of Sir Thomas More. The book provides instruction in arranging feasts and grand dinners, rituals of table-laying, the preparation, saucing and carving of meats and fish and servant's duties. This was the equivalent of a 'public school education'--a boy needed to know, for example, that clergy were to be served before noble lords, and how to lace a doublet after first warming the lord's linen underwear before a fire. Wynkyn de Worde (Jan van Wynkyn, d. 1534) was born in Alsace and came to England in 1476. He was a printer and publisher in London known for his work with William Caxton, and was the first to popularize the products of the printing press in England. This reprint includes a facsimile of the original text from Cambridge University Library with a modern interpretation facing each page and a glossary. Preceding the facsimile is a lengthy introductory essay by Peter Brears which explains the complicated rituals involved, including the elaborate arrangements of cloths before and after the meal. The book also includes drawings and explanations, an appendix consisting of a table providing a direct means of determining the carving terms and recommended accompaniments (syrups, sprinklings and sauces) for each particular item of food, and a short summary of the life of Wynken de Worde.

The kitchen was very much the heart of the home in country houses the length and breadth of Britain. Although this hive of activity was kept behind closed doors and often hidden away in the bowels of vast mansions, these rooms ensured that the house and those who lived in it were provisioned. Country houses were formerly self-sufficient to an incredible degree, requiring a range of purpose-built accommodation for food storage and a hierarchy of servants with unique skills. From brewing and baking through to distilling, working in the dairy and even ice-storage, this book offers an intimate look at the ingenuity and creativity that kept these kitchens running smoothly. It also explores the evolution of the kitchen range, cooking techniques, vessels and gadgets and the kitchen staff who used them, as well as the relationship between kitchen, servery and dining room. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in food, history and country houses, revealing how, above and below stairs, good food was always on the table.