The research library behind Give It Forth. This page gathers the historical and modern reference works that inform our research into historical foodways, manuscript cookery, herbs, household medicine, flower cookery, gardening, feast traditions, and household management.
Rather than relying on a single cookbook or modern interpretation, Give It Forth compares manuscript recipes, household accounts, estate records, herbals, medical texts, agricultural manuals, and modern scholarship to better understand how food was grown, purchased, prepared, served, preserved, and experienced.
Jump to: 🏠 Give It Forth Research Hubs | ⚔️ Anglo-Saxon & Early Medieval Sources | 🍖 Medieval Cookbooks & Household Guides | 📜 Household Accounts, Ordinances & Estate Records | ⚖️ Diet, Digestion & Humoral Theory | 🌾 Agriculture, Husbandry & Food Production | 🍞 Tudor & Stuart Printed Cookbooks | 🍯 Stillroom & Closet Manuals | 🌱 Herbals & Gardening Books | 🍷 Continental & Classical Influences | 📚 Modern Scholarly & Gateways
🏠 Give It Forth Research Hubs
- Harleian MS. 279 Recipe Index – Give It Forth hub for Harleian MS. 279, the fifteenth-century English manuscript at the center of much of this project. Harleian MS. 279 contains approximately 258 recipes divided into three major sections: Kalendare de Potages Dyvers, Kalendare de Leche Metys, and Dyverse Bake Metis, along with Bills of Fare from several banquet menus.
- Historical Cooking Basics – Give It Forth guide to basic techniques, ingredients, measurements, and interpretive tools used when reconstructing historical recipes.
- The Importance of Color in Medieval Cooking – Give It Forth article explaining how colorants such as saffron, saunders, herbs, almond milk, and other ingredients shaped the appearance of medieval dishes.
- The Steward’s Table – Give It Forth scaling tool for historical recipes. Readers can copy a Kitchen Copy recipe into the tool, adjust servings, and prepare a working kitchen copy for feasts, luncheons, dayboards, and home use.
- Start Here: Historical Recipes for Modern Cooks – Orientation page for readers new to historical cooking, medieval recipes, manuscript sources, and Give It Forth’s reconstruction process.
- Reconstructing an Anglo-Saxon Feast – Give It Forth hub for the Anglo-Saxon feast reconstruction project, including recipe research, menu structure, and early English foodways.
⚔️ Anglo-Saxon & Early Medieval Sources
- Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England (Thomas Oswald Cockayne, 1864) – Essential collection of Anglo-Saxon medical, herbal, and scientific texts, including Bald’s Leechbook, plant remedies, household medicine, and early English food-as-medicine traditions.
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De Observatione Ciborum
(Anthimus, c. 6th century; ed. Valentin Rose, 1877)
– Dietary and culinary advice written for Theuderic, King of the Franks; useful for digestion, food preparation, pork, meat, and the bridge between late Roman and early medieval foodways.
Alternate PDF: Internet Archive direct PDF. - Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary – Essential Old English dictionary for interpreting culinary, household, medicinal, and agricultural terminology.
- Anglo-Saxon Food and Drink (Ann Hagen, 2006) – Foundational modern study of Anglo-Saxon foodways, agriculture, preservation, dining customs, ingredients, and feast traditions.
- Anglo-Saxon Dæg-Mæl (Frederick Tupper) – Study of Anglo-Saxon meal customs, food terminology, and early English dining practice.
- The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles – Chronicle texts useful for historical context around agriculture, famine, kingship, feasting, trade, and daily life.
🍖 Medieval Cookbooks & Household Guides
- The Forme of Cury (c.1390) – Royal English cookbook; spice blends, almond milk, sauces, pottages, and Pomme Dorry recipes foundational to late-medieval fare.
- Harleian MS. 279 Hub (Give It Forth) – Give It Forth hub page for recipes and research connected to Harleian MS. 279, including almond-based sauces, porridges, pottages, custards, sops, flower dishes, and syrups.
- The Good Wife's Guide: A Medieval Household Book (Gina L. Greco & Christine M. Rose) – Modern translation and study of Le Ménagier de Paris; useful for household management, gardening, seasonal flowers, domestic labor, and medieval household practice.
- Manners and Household Expenses of England in the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Roxburghe Club, 1841) – Edited household records and accounts useful for elite provisioning, sugar, spices, violets, colored sugars, fish days, wine purchases, and luxury household expenses.
- Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (Harleian MS. 279 and Harleian MS. 4016; ed. Thomas Austin) – Primary printed transcription of fifteenth-century English recipes, including Harleian MS. 279 and Harleian MS. 4016.
- Liber Cure Cocorum (Sloane MS. 1986, c.1430) – Middle English verse cookbook containing Powme Dorrys and other recipes useful for comparing fifteenth-century English meat dishes, pottages, sauces, and cooking techniques.
- A Noble Boke off Cookry (England, 1468) – Late medieval English cookbook preserving recipes such as Pomes; useful for tracing the continuation of English medieval meatball, pottage, sauce, and feast traditions into the later fifteenth century.
- Ein Buch von Guter Spise (c.1350) – One of the earliest known German-language cookbooks; useful for comparing medieval sauces, meats, pottages, and regional foodways.
- The Babees Book (15th c.) – Courtesy and household guide; useful for dining etiquette, service, table manners, and household management.
- Buch of Cookery (Middle English; archived) – Transcriptions and translations of medieval recipes useful for cross-checking variant versions.
- Gentyll Manly Cokere (MS Pepys 1047, c.1490) – Late medieval to early Tudor recipe source, useful for transitional English cookery.
📜 Household Accounts, Ordinances & Estate Records
Cookbooks show what could be made. Household accounts, ordinances, and estate records show what was purchased, stored, served, paid for, rationed, and managed. These sources are especially useful for feast planning, seasonal availability, household provisioning, wages, kitchen staff, pantry organization, and the real-world cost of food.
- The Northumberland Household Book / The Regulations and Establishment of the Household of Henry Algernon Percy, Fifth Earl of Northumberland (household begun 1512; ed. 1905) – Major household ordinance for the Percy household at Wressle and Leckonfield. Useful for elite household structure, daily service, kitchen organization, pantry and buttery practice, feast provisioning, and noble household economy.
- A Collection of Ordinances and Regulations for the Government of the Royal Household (Society of Antiquaries, 1790) – Collection of English royal household ordinances, including material connected to the Liber Niger Domus Regis. Useful for royal service structure, officers, household governance, provisioning, and feast administration.
- Household Books of John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, and Thomas, Earl of Surrey (temp. 1481–1490; Roxburghe Club, 1844) – Late fifteenth-century household books with purchases, payments, provisioning details, and elite household management; valuable for comparing manuscript recipes to real household consumption.
- Manners and Household Expenses of England in the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Roxburghe Club, 1841) – Collection of household expenses, records, and accounts from noble and royal households. Useful for tracing purchases of spices, sugar, wine, fish, meat, grains, flowers, and other luxury or staple goods.
- Household Expenses of the Princess Elizabeth During Her Residence at Hatfield (October 1551–September 1552; ed. 1853) – Tudor household expense accounts for the young Princess Elizabeth. Useful for comparing later sixteenth-century provisioning, wages, household purchases, and elite domestic administration.
- Liber Niger Domus Regis Angliae (Black Book of the Household of Edward IV; manuscript description) – Royal household ordinance associated with Edward IV. Useful for royal household organization, officers, ceremonial service, and administrative structures behind elite dining.
- Percy Family, Dukes of Northumberland (National Archives discovery entry) – Archival overview for Percy family records, including household material. Useful for locating related estate, household, and administrative documents.
⚖️ Diet, Digestion & Humoral Theory
Medieval and early modern cookery cannot be fully separated from medical theory. These sources support discussions of digestion, complexion, hot/cold and wet/dry qualities, seasonal eating, food-as-medicine, and the logic behind spiced, acidic, or richly colored dishes.
- De Observatione Ciborum (Anthimus, c. 6th century; ed. Valentin Rose, 1877) – Early medieval dietary text discussing food preparation, digestion, health, meat, pork, and cooking methods. Especially useful for bridging Roman and early medieval dietary practice.
- Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum (School of Salerno; Harington translation) – Famous medieval regimen of health poem offering advice on diet, digestion, hygiene, and bodily balance. Useful for humoral notes and medieval ideas of healthful eating.
- Bartholomeus De Proprietatibus Rerum / On the Properties of Things (Bartholomaeus Anglicus; English print tradition) – Medieval encyclopedia covering natural philosophy, animals, plants, foods, and qualities of things. Useful for understanding the broader intellectual framework behind medieval ingredients and humoral interpretation.
- Liber de Proprietatibus Rerum (Bartholomaeus Anglicus; Latin edition) – Latin version of Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s influential encyclopedia. Useful for plant, animal, and food descriptions in medieval learned tradition.
- Culpeper's Complete Herbal (Nicholas Culpeper) – Later herbal and medical reference useful for planetary associations, humoral qualities, and the continued early modern medical understanding of plants, foods, and household remedies.
🌾 Agriculture, Husbandry & Food Production
Recipes begin long before the kitchen. Agricultural and husbandry sources help explain grain, livestock, dairying, orchards, gardens, seasonal labor, estate management, pigs, poultry, and the food economy that supplied medieval and early modern households.
- Walter of Henley’s Husbandry, together with an Anonymous Husbandry, Seneschaucie, and Robert Grosseteste’s Rules (13th-century texts; ed. Elizabeth Lamond, 1890) – Essential medieval estate and husbandry texts covering agricultural management, livestock, labor, grain, and estate oversight. Useful for understanding the world that supplied the medieval kitchen.
- The Book of Husbandry (Anthony Fitzherbert; early 16th c.; ed. 1882) – Early Tudor agricultural manual covering plowing, sowing, livestock, farm management, and rural household economy.
- The Book of Husbandry (Anthony Fitzherbert; Project Gutenberg edition) – Readable public-domain edition of Fitzherbert’s husbandry manual, useful for quick reference on early modern farming and livestock.
- Ruralia commoda (Pietro de' Crescenzi, c.1305; 1490 edition) – Foundational agricultural and gardening manual covering orchards, herbs, household growing, food production, and medieval land management.
🍞 Tudor & Stuart Printed Cookbooks
- A Booke of Cookrye (A.W., 1591) – Tudor printed cookbook with pies, pottages, sauces, and frequent almond milk references.
- A Booke of Cookerie, Otherwise Called the Good Huswiues Handmaid (1597) – Tudor household cookery text with practical recipes, kitchen guidance, preserves, pies, sauces, and everyday preparations.
- The Second Part of the Good Huswifes Jewell (Thomas Dawson, 1597) – Banqueting dishes, preserves, and household cookery; complements Dawson’s earlier work.
- The Widowes Treasure (1582) – Early printed closet book with preserves, medicines, and household receipts.
- The Ladies Delight (1638) – Cookery, preserves, perfumes, and stillroom practice.
-
The English Huswife
(Gervase Markham, 1615; readable text)
– Foundational English household manual covering cookery, preserves, medicinal waters, brewing, dairy work, feast foods, and kitchen management.
Facsimile: EEBO edition. - Country Contentments (Gervase Markham, 1615) – Household management, rural skills, and expanded context for early modern domestic practice.
🍯 Stillroom & Closet Manuals
- A Closet for Ladies and Gentlewomen (1608) – Floral syrups, conserves, preserves, and household remedies.
- The Queen’s Closet Opened (1655) – Conserves, preserves, syrups, distilled waters, and household receipts.
- The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened (Kenelm Digby, 1669) – Household and culinary collection featuring meads, conserves, syrups, flower preparations, herbal drinks, and period kitchen techniques.
- Delights for Ladies (Sir Hugh Plat, 1609) – Preserves, sugar work, perfumes, waters, and flower cookery.
- The Ladies Cabinet Opened (1639) – Perfumes, conserves, waters, and stillroom receipts.
- The Treasurie of Commodious Conceits (John Partridge, 1580) – Household cookery, remedies, cosmetic recipes, and useful domestic receipts.
- The Treasurie of Hidden Secrets (John Partridge, 1596) – Companion volume with preserves and medicinal or culinary uses for herbs and flowers.
- Prepositas His Practise (1588) – Household medical manual with oils, syrups, floral conserves, and stillroom remedies.
- The Art of Cookery Refin’d and Augmented (Joseph Cooper, 1654) – Refined seventeenth-century English cookery associated with royal kitchens; includes banquet dishes, sauces, preserves, conserves, and elite culinary techniques.
🌱 Herbals & Gardening Books
- Ruralia commoda (Pietro de' Crescenzi, c.1305; 1490 edition) – Foundational agricultural and gardening manual covering orchards, herbs, household growing, food production, and medieval land management.
- A Nievve Herball (Rembert Dodoens, 1554; trans. Henry Lyte) – English herbal rich in plant lore, virtues, and household uses; especially useful for identifying sweet violets, garden versus wild forms, seasonality, and humoral qualities.
- Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes (John Gerard, 1597) – Influential English herbal combining botany, medicine, gardening, household plant use, and culinary references.
- Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris (John Parkinson, 1629) – English gardening book on flowers, herbs, gardens, virtues, and uses; useful for cultivated violets, garden varieties, flowering seasons, and early modern flower culture.
- Culpeper's Complete Herbal (Nicholas Culpeper) – Herbal and medical reference describing plant virtues, planetary associations, and humoral qualities; useful for violets as cooling and moistening plants.
- Culpeper’s School of Physick (1659) – Medicinal and household uses of plants, including roses, violets, and almond preparations.
- An English Herbal (1690) – Late seventeenth-century herbal aligning planetary rulership with herbal virtues.
🍷 Continental & Classical Influences
- Apicius: Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome (Joseph Dommers Vehling translation) – English translation and critical study of De Re Coquinaria; useful for Roman ingredients, sauces, preparation methods, shaped meat dishes, meatballs, and culinary continuities.
- The Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook (Andalusia, 13th century; Charles Perry, trans.) – Arabic cookbook preserving meatball, stew, sauce, egg-thickened, saffron, murri, and spiced meat recipes; valuable for comparing medieval Mediterranean techniques with later English manuscript cookery.
- De Honesta Voluptate (Platina, c.1465) – First printed European cookbook; blends classical dietetics with Renaissance cuisine.
-
Le Ménagier de Paris
(1393)
– French household guide mixing moral instruction, gardening, cookery, and domestic management; useful for flower cultivation, overwintering violets, household practice, and feast presentation.
Readable text: Project Gutenberg text. - Opera dell’arte del cucinare (Bartolomeo Scappi, 1570) – Monumental Renaissance cookbook covering feast menus, kitchen equipment, sauces, and elite Italian cookery.
- Le Cuisinier françois (La Varenne, 1651; facsimile) – Important transition from medieval to early modern French cuisine, especially stocks, sauces, herbs, and vegetables.
📚 Modern Scholarly & Gateways
- The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy (Redon, Sabban, Serventi) – Reliable modern translations with historical context; useful for comparative medieval cookery.
- MedievalCookery.com – Searchable collection of transcribed medieval and Renaissance cookbooks, including Harleian manuscripts, A Noble Boke off Cookry, and comparative recipe texts.
- Medieval and Renaissance Food: Sources, Recipes, and Articles – Long-standing gateway resource for historical cooks and reenactors, with articles, recipes, translations, and source links.
- OldCookery.com (archived index) – Archived gateway to medieval and Renaissance recipe transcriptions and related resources.
- LOC Pennell MS 2012pennell17891 – Early modern English recipe book with preserves and medicinal items.
- LOC Pennell MS 2011bit28418 – Handwritten household recipes, likely seventeenth to eighteenth century.
- LOC Pennell MS 2011bit22420 – Household manuscript with preserves and medicinal receipts, useful for later comparisons.
Research Use Note: Cookbooks tell us what a cook could prepare. Household accounts tell us what households actually bought, paid for, stored, rationed, and served. Herbals and medical texts explain how ingredients were understood. Agricultural manuals show how food was grown and managed before it reached the kitchen. Give It Forth uses these sources together whenever possible.
Note: Where possible, links go to publicly accessible facsimiles or readable texts through Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive, EEBO/TCP, the Library of Congress, Biodiversity Heritage Library, and other open repositories. Some Early English Books Online items may require institutional access for full page images.
⚠️ Source Note: Primary works are referenced in their original spelling and language where appropriate. Modernized descriptions are provided only to help readers navigate the sources.
⚠️ Medical and Herbal Note: Historical medical, herbal, and household remedy sources are included for research into historical foodways and domestic practice. They are not medical advice and should not be used as modern treatment guidance.
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