‘We can never recapture the truly authentic food experience of the past,’ cautions Peter Brears in his latest culinary text, ‘unless we literally work from the ground up’ (p 9). It is indeed from the ‘ground up’ that Brears guides the reader on a journey through food and drink in the period from around 1500 to around 1660. From planning the kitchen through sourcing fuel and domestic economic management to the collection of water, the kitchen is, rightly, depicted as an odorous, smoke-driven workspace best situated where prevailing winds could carry away such anti-social exhaust. Also, Brears reminds us, food stocks were accounting commodities: food stocks were subject to stock-taking in households since food, being of high value, required forward planning (such as preserving) and management.

In common with other works of this type, Brears’s recipes are written with the modern cook in mind. Banishing swan, sucking pig and brain dishes to socio-cultural antiquity, foods acceptable to the modern palate are presented in a workable format: imperial and metric measurements, cooking times and modern cooking terms are all provided. While anachronistic, adjustments for the modern cook are standard format for a book of this type and are arguably necessary for cooks new to late medieval and early modern cookery. For the experienced, Brears shares contemporary prose and verse, sources from which ingredients and sometimes their perceived qualities are given but which rely upon the eye and taste of the cook to interpret the dish.

Within its use of contemporary texts, this book shines among its peers that confine their recipes to the prohibitively expensive cookery books of the elite and instead explores food and drink consumed by the majority through verse such as John Taylor’s Pennyles Pilgrimage (1618), in which hyssop, sage, rosemary, betony and scurvy grass are named as herbs for flavouring ale, and Andrew Boorde’s 1542 account of a cloudy Cornish ale that tasted smoky and was too watery for his taste. Nonetheless, cookery for the elite household is also included: flamboyant table pieces to astound the diner and flavours to which only the richest could aspire, such as saffron, lemon zest and sugar, are discussed. Brears offers food for all but those of the lowest social status, middling and elite mingling together in chapters focused upon the bakehouse, dairy, boiling room, brewhouse, buttery and pantry, while dedicated chapters give the theory behind and recipes for pastry, puddings, roasting and frying, as well as salds (sic), pickles and sauces.

Following Brears’s directions (while doubling-up quantities) in a replica Tudor copper of approximately 60l capacity, I boiled 24l of water, reduced the temperature to 62°C before adding 5.4kg of malted barley. The sweet wort produced was satisfactory and was subsequently fermented into a 10 per cent volume ale as Brears had promised. Note that Brears uses wheat – Canadian wheat of today is the basis for wheaten bread today, a foodstuff unknown until modern times – and rye flour in his recipes. These are readily available to the modern cook, on sale in most supermarkets, a necessary compensation for the lack of medieval cereal. However, in historic culinary demonstrations and exhibitions, I have ground oats, barley and peas to produce mixed flours (with varied results!). Pea bread, made with a maximum of 7 per cent pea, based on records of c 1316, the period of the Great European Famine, produces a heavy loaf with no redeemable charms whatsoever. However, in a famine such as those that continued into Tudor and early Stuart times, you would not argue with it. Pea bread is most palatable when served forth with food. Used as a thickener for pottage it would be almost palatable! Cooking and Dining in Tudor and Early Stuart England works not only as a curio in the modern kitchen but also as a manual in the Tudor kitchen.

Brears does not engage with academic debate surrounding his subject. However, this an informed, comprehensively researched, interesting and worthwhile read for the enthusiast. The evolution that cookery and dining underwent during this period dominates thematically as the reader is taken from the twilight of Anglo-Francophile cooking of the late Middle Ages, through adventures in taste and texture enabled via overseas trading, to the dawn of the table fork.

Illustrations, which are the work of the author, have been diligently drawn and benefit the reader by representing contemporary visual sources together for comparison and discussion. Pie designs, cutlery types and kitchen utensils are just a few of the diagrammatical gems that accompany the text while chronologically plotting kitchen evolution. Woodcuts appear alongside seventeenth-century illustrations of baking processes and sixteenth-century depictions of feasting and banqueting. The index is inclusive and is sub-divided into a general index as well as an index of recipes, which make navigating the 672 pages manageable. Cooking and Dining in Tudor and Early Stuart England delivers what the title promises: a comprehensive single-volume that encompasses its subject. Well written by a respected author in his field, this is sure to be a go-to book for Tudor and Stuart cooking interpreters as well as serving as an authoritative work for those new to the subject.