The Forme of Cury: A Roll of Ancient English Cookery Compiled, about A.D. 1390

by Samuel Pegge

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Genres: History, Cookbooks, Food, Cooking, Nonfiction, Food History, Food and Drink

180 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2005

About the author

Samuel Pegge the elder was an antiquary.
He published an important study on the Roman roads of Derbyshire as well as notes which his son, also Samuel, continued on the subject of Derbyshire words and phrases.

Reviews

[Stuart Estell]

Fascinating stuff, although the recipes involve troubling amounts of lard and lampreys. A great insight into 14th century haute cuisine though!

[KegOfGrog]

The Forme of Cury (cury deriva dalla lingua francese media / "cuire" = cucinare) è una raccolta di ricette della cucina medievale inglese del quattordicesimo secolo. Pubblicato come edizione di singolo manoscritto nel 1780 (la prima pubblicazione risale invece al 1390) dall'antiquario inglese Samuel Pegge per il creatore del British Museum, Gustavus Brander, è uno dei testi di cucina medievale più famoso. Anche se il manoscritto originale non ci è pervenuto il testo appare in altri nove, di cui una pergamena che riporta come autore "the chief Master Cooks of King Richard II".

The Form of Cury sembra sia stato influenzato dal Liber de Coquina (a sua volta influenzato dalla cucina Araba), uno dei più antichi testi di cucina del quattordicesimo secolo.
La sua "concorrenza" al tempo era Le Viandier (Le Viandier de Taillevent) collezione medievale di ricette francesi dell'inizio del 1300. The Form of Cury è molto più dolce della sua controparte francese, infatti circa il 31% delle ricette utilizza lo zucchero (49% se si comprende la frutta), rispetto al 6% delle ricette del Viandier (8% se si comprende la frutta).

Il testo è scritto in Middle English e per questo può risultare di difficile lettura, ma è un must have per gli appassionati di medioevo/cucina medievale.

Essendo stato scritto per dei cuochi professionisti, non è stato pensato per essere reso fruibile alla maggioranza delle persone; questo si riscontra nel fatto che raramente sono indicate le quantità per le ricette, in quanto si presupponeva che la persona che le avrebbe seguite già avesse un'idea delle quantità. È il primo testo inglese a menzionare alcuni ingredienti come: chiodi di garofano, olio d'oliva, noce moscata e zucche. Molte ricette contengono quelle che all'epoca erano considerate spezie rare e preziose (alcune lo sono tutt'oggi) - ad esempio, sono citati: cumino, zenzero, pepe, cannella e cardamomo - e alcune avevano carattere solamente decorativo; veniva usato, ad esempio, il prezzemolo tritato per tingere un piatto di verde. Tutto questo perchè i banchetti erano una vera e propria prova di forza per i re e lord medievali.

Alcune ricette (purchè con alcuni accorgimenti per adattarle ai gusti e necessità moderni), sono tutt'oggi replicabili. Una delle mie preferite è quella per la preparazione dell'ippocrasso, o Ypocras, un vino speziato la cui creazione è attribuita al medico greco Ippocrate.

[josé saleiro gomes]

this is the only good cookbook

[Lloyd Earickson]

After being forced to scroll past dozens of nearly identical, overly sappy stories on various food blogs in order to reach anything relevant about the recipe, I decided to go old school and instead picked up a cookbook from the fourteenth century.  Well, that's not the real reason I decided to read The Forme of Cury, considered the first English language cookbook and written in Middle English for the court of Richard II, but the amusing part is how little anyone who knows me would be surprised if it were true.  In reality, this book was referenced in  The History of English  podcast, and I was intrigued enough to find a copy and wade through mostly untranslated Middle English grammar and vocabulary.

Though I read it straight through, this falls into the same esoteric category of ancient works as Kaogong Ji and Pythagoras's golden verses.  It's more interesting from historical and research perspectives than it is from a reading perspective, since it is almost entirely a book of barebones recipes, without the narrative trappings of more modern incarnations of the genre.  Stroud explores it quite extensively from linguistic and cultural perspectives in his episodes on the subject, so I will not be rehashing those insights here, save to say it adds an additional level of understanding to validate another scholar's conclusions by direct assessment of the source material.

Another text I found to be in conversation with this one (it may even have been referenced in it) is The Healing Hand.  The line between cuisine and medicine is often a difficult one to draw throughout history, and especially in this region while the theory of the humors dominated, assuming it can or should be drawn at all.  Since medicine was so dependent upon the balancing of the humors, the humors associated with a dish were considered central to treatment of various ailments.  Nor is the theory of humors the only ancient medical practice which emphasized diet; the Greeks and Romans both had several unique theories of medicine which leveraged diet as both cause and cure for various ailments, as did the ancient Indians, Chinese...I could probably save time by attempting to list the cultures which didn't have a strong observed connection between cuisine and cures.  This should not be surprising, considering the intimate relationship which is known through today to exist between our health and what we consume.  Today we disguise such knowledge behind semiscientific* claims about the gut microbiome and the neurodigestive connection, but the tradition of health manipulation through food remains robust.

*By semiscientific, I do not mean to cast my skepticism on the robust body of peer reviewed scientific research on the importance and impact of the human microbiome, the strong biochemical connections between the brain and the digestive system, or the compelling evidence for the high holistic impact of diet on health.  Rather, that "semi" modifier is for the largely untested and unproven claims made by most food or drink products which are marketed as "probiotic," "metabolism boosting," etc.  It's not that there's nothing to such claims, but they are usually overstated, sometimes nonsensical, and never properly validated in an experimental setting against a placebo standard.

The Forme of Cury's recipes are akin to my recipes in that they are reluctant to provide anything like a definite, measurable quantity of any ingredient.  Occasionally it provides measurements like "handful," but usually it will simply say to add a "large" amount or some similar, subjective description.  Nor are there times, detailed instructions, or other amplifying information we might associate with more recent recipes, or even with the recipes captured in some older cookbooks, like the famous Roman Apicius.  Rather, the book reads more like a reference book for someone already somewhat familiar with the cooking style and techniques involved.  You probably won't be able to exactly replicate any of the recipes, but they might still provide some inspiration for your own cooking.

I thought a lot about Impressions while I was reading this book.  Food forms a key element throughout the story, and I made a deliberate effort when I wrote it to ensure the foods I presented used ingredients appropriate to the biomes I showed, and to employ techniques appropriate to the roughly equivalent time period.  However, the cuisine presented in The Forme of Cury is decidedly less complex (and, for the most part, less appetizing) than the cuisine Raven and his family share, or the general culinary expectations of the society in which they live.  Almost everything in The Forme of Cury is a soup, stew, pottage, porridge, or other mostly liquid form of food.  Now, I eat plenty soups and stews myself - I make some kind of vegetable soup or stew almost every week during the cooler months - but it's hardly the height of culinary experience.  So, in my historically adjacent fantasy novel in which I make a conscious effort to be somewhat true to the equivalent Earth historical contexts, do I need to make an adjustment to the food?  I'm leaning towards no, but I'll continue thinking about it.

That this text is in Middle English does not make for easy reading, though I found it more approachable than I expected, thanks in no small part to what I've learned from The History of English podcast.  Middle English is not quite an entirely different language, but it is also not simply another dialect of English or an older style of the language.  Scholars aren't certain of the meaning of all the terms in The Forme of Cury because they've fallen out of use and have no translation into modern English.  Reading it is somewhere between reading an older style of modern English and trying to read French based only on an English knowledge of Greek and Latin root words.  The best trick I've found for successfully interpreting Middle English is to attempt to read it aloud (either actually aloud, or phonetically pronouncing the words in your head).  Since spelling was almost entirely phonetic, that should get you close, although the drifting of pronunciations over time complicates matters.

You probably shouldn't just sit down and read The Forme of Cury, as I did, and it probably won't mean much to you out of context even if you happen to be fluent in Middle English.  However, if you have an interest in the history of food or the history of language, whether that interest is born from a story you're writing, scholarship you're pursuing, or general polymathic tendencies, it's worth finding a copy.  You can read a version with a forward and some footnotes by Pagge from the eighteenth century for free on Project Gutenberg.

[Chantelle]

Interesting

The book was rough for me. You really have to read it out loud (or at least I did) to understand what was written. The recipes are definitely interesting, though hard to measure out and some had Ingredients I don't think you can even get anymore. This was one of those reads that have historical significance and I just had to take a look and see what a sliver of life was like back then. I already know I probably won't make any of these with the exception of the apple pie but maybe will give the others a go in the future. 

[Cameron Stevenson]

Weird but delightful recipes from long ago, plus who would have guessed it was the Brits to make an early version of a lasagna.

[Lily]

Truly one of the most fascinating texts I’ve ever read.

[Rene Thompson]

Wonderful way to see cooking during the Medieval period.

[Robert Beveridge]

Samuel Pegge, The Forme of Cury: A Roll of Ancient English Cookery (Project Gutenberg, 1780)

In 1988, during my sophomore year in college, I took a course in Middle English. I never expected to have much of a use for it other then fulfilling the number of credits I needed in the English department to get my BA. I certainly didn't expect that a quarter of a century later I would be drawing heavily on that old, almost-forgotten knowledge in an attempt to read a cookbook. Now, looking at it from the other end of the telescope: when I started reading Samuel Pegge's The Forme of Cury: A Roll of Ancient English Cookery, I figured that at one hundred ten pages, it was going to be an easy one-day read. Instead, here I am a week later, having just finished it, and to tell the truth, I'm exhausted. That was a tough, tough read!

The title tells you pretty much everything you need to know here. (Note: “cury” is the medieval way of saying “cookery”; you'll find nary a hint of garam masala here, though the 13th century British seem to have discovered turmeric, a common curry ingredient.) The book is comprised of two separate cookery manuscripts, one from the 13th century and one from the late middle ages (the 1400s, perhaps?; the language is more recognizably English, but the thorn was still in use), along with copious, sometimes contradictory, notes from Pegge. (“Rape: a dish that does not contain turnips.” ...huh?) It's mostly of archival/academic interest today, though it would be fun to try and make some of these recipes, assuming you can even get some of the ingredients these days (good luck going to the market and buying a swan!). But it's interesting to note the differences between cooking then and cooking now. For example, almond milk was used almost exclusively in place of cow's milk, fruit (especially raisins) was a common ingredient in main dishes, and the 13th century Brits had already discovered galangal—an Asian spice I'm not convinced America has yet discovered seven hundred-odd years later. (Basically, it's a stronger ginger.)

Fun stuff, though if you haven't ever studied middle English, you may have a hard time figuring out what's being said at first. (Here's a hint to get you started: that odd character that pops up in many words is called a thorn, and in modern writing you'd see a “th” there.) ***

[Basel]

When it comes to English cookery and cuisine, there are so many representations and misrepresentations out there. Some people would reduce it deep fried fish, others relate it to some of the most of the most prestigious chefs and restaurants in the world. One thing is certain, though: English cuisine went through huge changes. Reading the Forme of Cury, which is probably the oldest English cookbook, we venture into a different world. This book was published in the later part of the 14th century and is a compilation of recipes by
The master cooks of King Richard II.

It is very fascinating to see the variety of spices common to that time. It is also fascinating to see how the role of some spices radically changed over time. Sugar, for instance, was a main ingredient in several savory dishes. Though above all, it is an important historical and linguistical document. It marks the first ever indication of England using ingredients such as olive oil. It even shows many Italian and French influences, even in the title. "Cury" isn't the spice. But it comes from the French verb "cuire", to cook. So it becomes "The Method of Cooking ". Furthermore, we get a keen insight into the English language and the different linguistic influences it recieved. So I do recommend this book to not only those of you interested in culinary history and English cuisine, but also interested in general English history.

[Juliana]

Fantastic and fun.. . To read aloud to your likeminded nerdy friends. Its a nice snapshot of middle English language and culture and it inspired me to spend more time with ole Chaucer. I didnt actually try making any recipes, partly because there arent any measures to the ingredients and partly because Meijer doesnt carry deer organs or "good powder."

[Angela Randall]

Free to read (along with a whole lot of ancient gastronomical texts) from Adelaide University's ebook collection here.

[Mike]

That's a fun read.

[Sara]

Very interesting!

[Meg]

A late mediaeval cookbook with interesting recipes e.g. Take coneys and smite him to pieces. Parboil him and draw him with a good broth with almond blanched and brayed...