The roots of today’s recipes begin in manuscript cookbooks and the medieval kitchen. The oldest recipe in this book, for a spicy roast pork called Cormarye, dates back to the late 1300s and the height of medieval feasting. It comes from Forme of Cury, a fourteenth-century manuscript that belonged to Richard II but did not appear in print until the late 1700s. The script of the time can seem almost a code, but this is clearly a recipe for the cook to follow in the kitchen. “Prick it well with a knife and lay it in the sauce,” say the instructions for Cormarye, and “serve it [the sauce] with the roast immediately.” What actually ends up on the plate is difficult to imagine, and recipes were written mainly for the record. The manuscript itself would have been a treasured item, stored with care in the master’s library, rather than thumbed through in the kitchen by the cook, who almost certainly could not read. Advice on serving seems of prime importance so as to please the master (who after all had commissioned the book in the first place).
