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.

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.

What is unique about Brears’ book is that he combines an account of the cookery with a close look at the practical arrangements, the kitchens and dining halls, where that food was cooked and consumed. His prose is enlivened by his drawings – as accurate as can be – which lay bare to the modern reader just what was going on in places like Hampton Court palace, as well as in humbler homes throughout the land. There are plenty of recipes for those who like to try things for themselves, all properly tested by the author, who is a historic food consultant to TV and country house owners. The era begins with the near medieval styles of Henry VII and VIII, with special attention to Henry VIII’s propagandizing banquets and feasts for foreign monarchs; progresses to the reign of Elizabeth, the effects of new foodstuffs from America, and treats some the great houses of the Tudor aristocracy; and finishes with the first two Stuart kings, James I and Charles I under whose rule we began to move towards a more modern style of cooking and when we also started to produce cookery books in large number.

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.

For centuries the food cooked in our country houses was the finest available, its variety greatly expanded by Victorian investment in new technology and professional cooks who were employed in the country houses. Adventurous, international trade in the Victorian period also meant that new ingredients became available. This great culinary tradition began its decline around the time of the First World War, and collapsed with the outbreak of war in 1939. Now, over eighty years later, it remains forgotten, as even those who experienced its final stages have passed away. Hopefully Peter Brears’ book will go a long way in reviving interest in it, and encouraging further appreciation and enjoyment of all its diverse aspects.

This new work by Peter Brears, perhaps Britain’s foremost expert on the historical kitchen, looks at these important elements of cooking and dining. 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. 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 and the rituals that grew up around these. Here, Peter Brears has drawn a 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.

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.

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.

What is unique about Brears’ book is that he combines an account of the cookery with a close look at the practical arrangements, the kitchens and dining halls, where that food was cooked and consumed. His prose is enlivened by his drawings – as accurate as can be – which lay bare to the modern reader just what was going on in places like Hampton Court palace, as well as in humbler homes throughout the land. There are plenty of recipes for those who like to try things for themselves, all properly tested by the author, who is a historic food consultant to TV and country house owners. The era begins with the near medieval styles of Henry VII and VIII, with special attention to Henry VIII’s propagandizing banquets and feasts for foreign monarchs; progresses to the reign of Elizabeth, the effects of new foodstuffs from America, and treats some the great houses of the Tudor aristocracy; and finishes with the first two Stuart kings, James I and Charles I under whose rule we began to move towards a more modern style of cooking and when we also started to produce cookery books in large number.

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.

For centuries the food cooked in our country houses was the finest available, its variety greatly expanded by Victorian investment in new technology and professional cooks who were employed in the country houses. Adventurous, international trade in the Victorian period also meant that new ingredients became available. This great culinary tradition began its decline around the time of the First World War, and collapsed with the outbreak of war in 1939. Now, over eighty years later, it remains forgotten, as even those who experienced its final stages have passed away. Hopefully Peter Brears’ book will go a long way in reviving interest in it, and encouraging further appreciation and enjoyment of all its diverse aspects.

This new work by Peter Brears, perhaps Britain’s foremost expert on the historical kitchen, looks at these important elements of cooking and dining. 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. 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 and the rituals that grew up around these. Here, Peter Brears has drawn a 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.