Peter Brears – författare

The massive kitchens at Hampton Court were built to supply the entire household of Henry VIII. They were the first professional kitchens organised on such a scale. Brears provides a practical guide to their running, dispelling many of the misconceptions about the cooking and eating of meals in Tudor England.Including authentic recipes from the period, adapted for modern kitchens, such as Chicken Farced and Smothered Rabbit and White Leach (a form of cool jelly), All the King''s Cooks is fully illustrated with colour photographs recreating the life of the kitchens. With the author''s own detailed drawings, no other book gets so close to the sights, sounds and smells of the Tudor kitchen.

Yorkshire's architecturalheritage is arguably the finest in Britain. From the Middle Ages it includedEurope's largest medieval cathedral at York, England's most completemonasteries at Kirkstall and Fountains abbeys, its collegiate churches ofBeverley, Howden and Ripon, and great Norman keeps at Richmond, Conisbrough andYork's Clifford's Tower. After the Dissolution of the Monasteries, most majornew buildings were domestic. Heath Old Hall, Burton Agnes and Pontefract NewHall were built to sophisticated Elizabethan and Jacobean designs, followed bysmaller, provincial halls of the seventeenth century. From about 1700, some ofBritain's finest great houses such as Wentworth Woodhouse and Castle Howardwere constructed in Yorkshire. This great architecture attracted theattention of John Buckler and his son John ChessellBuckler, contemporaries of J.M.W. Turner. Between 1804 and 1820 they made aremarkably comprehensive graphic record of hundreds of the county's finest andmost interesting buildings, many now lost and forgotten, as part of a body ofwork that took them across England and Wales. Now, for the first time inmore than two hundred years, this book makes a large selection of thesedrawings readily available, accompanied by an engaging narrative. Bucklers'Yorkshire Buildings provides an invaluable resource for all thoseinterested in Yorkshire's architectural legacy.

Wynken de Worde's elegant black-letter handbook, long out of print, remains a major source of information on the serving and eating of meals and feasts in the great houses of late medieval and early Tudor England. Southover's reprint carries a facsimile of the original text from Cambridge University Library, with a modern interpretation facing each page. The book explains in detail the intricate rituals of setting and waiting at table, how to prepare the dishes to be served and exactly what was eaten at different times of the year, and was written as an instruction manual for well-born boys as part of their early education. It also tells the reader how to carve meat, fowls and fish and to sauce each dish with its appropriate accompaniments, some of them very sophisticated. A description is included of the chamberlain's duties in his lord's chamber, dressing him and preparing him for church, and for bed. There is an interesting section on the order of precedence on feast days and great occasions. Peter Brears writes an Introduction and provides a glossary and drawings to explain the complicated rituals, including the arrangement of cloths before and at the end of meals. His research into traditional domestic life, combined with extensive experience of cooking authentic meals in historic properties, has given him a unique knowledge of English food history. He was for twenty years director of York Castle as well as of Leeds City Museums. His books include The Gentlewoman's Kitchen (1984); Traditional Food in Yorkshire (1987); All the King's Cooks (1999), and The Compleat Housekeeper (2000).

With unlimited wealth drawn from land and international trade, the upper classes of Georgian England were able to enjoy the most lavish foods and lifestyles. This was only made possible, however, by massively investing in suites of huge new kitchen offices, and having the most up-to-date fixtures and equipment and a highly-trained staff. French cooks and confectioners were among the country's most highly-paid professionals as rich families competed to provide the finest entertainments. Though on lower wages, the largely English butlers, housekeepers, maids and footmen ensured that all meals were served in the most elegant manner in magnificent dining rooms provided with some of the world's best gold and silver, porcelain, glassware and furniture. This was the age of Robert Adam, Thomas Chippendale, Josiah Wedgwood, and Paul Storr.As in the three preceding volumes of Prospect Books' unique series, this book draws on over thirty years of research into the records, buildings, artefacts and manners of the period to follow foods from their arrival through to serving at the table. It does this by describing each department in turn, including specially-prepared measured drawings and illustrations of their structures, equipment, products and staffs. Moving on into the dining room table settings, meals and manners are all then detailed in a similar way.Since it is essential to use all the senses when studying food, numerous Georgian recipes that can be followed using currently available ingredients have also been provided. Now for the first time, re-enactors and all others can dine in Georgian authenticity by using a single book.

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 cook''s 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.