A review by constancemn
Medieval Tastes: Food, Cooking, and the Table by Massimo Montanari

3.0

This is a series of essays on food preferences in various medieval areas and times. I found it a helpful read--there are a lot of "medieval" cookbooks around and it can be difficult to understand from reading those how people actually ate--monks versus royalty versus normal people, early versus middle versus late. The essays also help add some perspective on the reasons people ate as they did (e.g. religious motivations, health concerns, taste and gastronomy as it was perceived at the time). New World versus Old World food was also covered from a somewhat unusual perspective--rather than discussing how amazing and revolutionary the potato was, for instance, this book concentrates on the quite similar foods which the potato gradually replaced, and why. So that was all pretty cool. All that said, the book is super dry reading, and it isn't really organized very cohesively. I would say it's a good supplement to understanding European cookery from about a thousand years ago, to help you identify what's silly or made-up or inaccurate in more "fun" types of books on the topic.