Zinziber: Sauces from Poitou Twelfth-century culinary recipes from Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, ms 51

The manuscript tradition of English cookery is for the most part clear: scholars have probably already unearthed most of what has remained and, in large part, the manuscripts were composed in the later Middle Ages. Among the muniments of Durham Cathedral Priory, however, many of which are now in a Cambridge college, there has survived a single sheet headed ‘Here begin different kinds of condiments from Poitou’ (it is embedded in a manuscript containing medical recipes). This appears to date from the middle of the 12th century, some 150 years before our hitherto earliest extant culinary MS. This book is written by the scholars who discovered and interpreted the manuscript and the modern chefs and cooks who have recreated the dishes. It contains a full transcript and translation of the MS, an extended discussion of the flavourings deployed and the culinary tradition from whence it hails, and an assessment of its medical context. It closes with a set of modern recipes for those who wish to try these arresting flavours, which use tastes that we now reckon marginal or difficult in culinary terms, such as costmary, southernwood, savory and hyssop, and spices such as zeodary, spikenard and galingale.