The Feast That Sent Me Back to the Manuscripts
- michel1492
- 1 minute ago
- 5 min read
What One Mid-Century Food History Could — and Could Not — Teach a Cook
Many years ago, I agreed to cook a historical feast for one hundred guests. It sounded romantic at first. A table full of dishes inspired by the past, flavors drawn from the kitchens of earlier centuries, the kind of meal that makes history feel alive. Like many cooks beginning that journey, I went searching for a book that could guide me. One title seemed perfect: Cooks, Gluttons & Gourmets: A History of Cookery by Betty Wason, first published in 1962 by Doubleday & Company.
At first glance, the book appears exactly what the curious cook hopes for. It promises a sweeping tour through the history of food, moving from ancient civilizations through medieval feasts and into the kitchens of Renaissance Europe and the rise of the modern restaurant. Wason writes with enthusiasm and charm. Her pages are filled with colorful stories about extravagant banquets, famous chefs, and the eating habits of kings, monks, and travelers. It is an engaging book to read, and it reflects a moment when the public was beginning to take an interest in culinary history.
But when I sat down to plan a real menu for one hundred people, something quickly became clear. The book could tell me fascinating stories about banquets, yet it did not tell me how people actually cooked. It described grand feasts, but it did not help me understand what dishes belonged to a particular region, what ingredients were available in season, or how historical cooks combined flavors in their kitchens. For someone trying to recreate a historically grounded meal, those details matter enormously. Without them, you are left with impressions rather than instructions.
Understanding why requires a brief look at the author herself. Elizabeth “Betty” Wason (1912–2001) was an American journalist, foreign correspondent, and broadcaster. Educated at Radcliffe College, she spent years reporting from Europe and Latin America and became known for her engaging commentary on international affairs. Later in her career she turned toward food writing, bringing the same narrative style that made her journalism accessible to general readers. Her books, including The Cooking of Scandinavia (1965) and The Cooking of Spain and Portugal (1967), were part of a wave of mid-twentieth-century publications that introduced American audiences to global cuisines. Cooks, Gluttons & Gourmets reflects that background. It is written as a cultural narrative about food rather than as a technical guide for cooks or a study grounded in primary culinary manuscripts.
The book’s ambition is remarkable. It attempts to summarize thousands of years of culinary history in a single volume. Yet that sweeping scope comes with limitations. The text rarely works directly from historical recipes, and although a bibliography appears at the back, individual passages are seldom tied to specific sources. As a result, the reader learns a great deal about the spectacle of historical dining but far less about the working reality of historical kitchens.
This distinction became painfully obvious as I struggled to plan my feast. I needed more than anecdotes about banquets. I needed to know how cooks balanced spices, thickened sauces, roasted meats, preserved ingredients, and constructed meals appropriate to the season. In other words, I needed the voices of the cooks themselves.
That realization sent me back to the manuscripts.
One of the first texts that proved invaluable was Bartolomeo Platina’s De honesta voluptate et valetudine (On Right Pleasure and Good Health), written in the late fifteenth century. Platina’s work drew heavily from the recipes of the chef Martino da Como and became one of the earliest printed books to discuss cooking in Europe. Modern readers often turn to the translation On Right Pleasure and Good Health: A Critical Edition and Translation edited by Mary Ella Milham (Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1998, ISBN 978-0866982044). In Platina’s pages, food is not merely described; it is prepared. Ingredients are listed, techniques explained, and flavors grounded in the agricultural realities of Renaissance Italy.
Even more practical was the monumental work of Bartolomeo Scappi, the sixteenth-century chef who served several popes. His Opera dell’arte del cucinare (1570) remains one of the most detailed culinary documents of the Renaissance. Modern readers can explore it through The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570): L’arte et prudenza d’un maestro cuoco translated by Terence Scully (University of Toronto Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0802096248). Scappi does not merely describe dishes; he diagrams kitchens, explains equipment, and records hundreds of recipes that show how food was actually prepared in the papal courts.
Another text that helped illuminate the culinary world of the sixteenth century is the French work Livre fort excellent de cuysine , a collection of recipes reflecting the cooking traditions of early modern France. While original editions are rare, recipes from the text appear in several historical culinary studies, including Terence Scully’s The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages (Boydell Press, 1995, ISBN 978-0851156115). Works like these provide the essential context missing from many narrative histories.
Once I began reading these sources, the fog lifted. Instead of vague descriptions of feasts, I found real kitchens. Recipes revealed the rhythm of historical cooking: the careful use of spices, the balance between sweet and savory flavors, the seasonal availability of ingredients, and the practical techniques that allowed cooks to feed large households. The past suddenly felt tangible, not theatrical.
Seen from this perspective, Cooks, Gluttons & Gourmets becomes easier to appreciate for what it truly is. It is a lively cultural overview written during a time when culinary history had not yet developed the rigorous methods historians use today. It captures the excitement of discovering that food itself has a story. Yet it is not a working guide for cooks who wish to recreate historical meals.
Today, culinary historians approach the subject very differently. Scholars such as Barbara Ketcham Wheaton, Alan Davidson, Ken Albala, and Massimo Montanari have demonstrated how deeply food history is intertwined with agriculture, trade routes, medicine, and social life. Their work relies on manuscripts, archival records, and archaeological evidence rather than anecdote alone.
For cooks who want to explore the flavors of the past, the lesson is simple. Narrative histories can spark curiosity, but the real discoveries begin when we open the old cookbooks themselves. In those pages we find something far more valuable than stories about banquets. We find instructions written by people who actually stood in historical kitchens, tasting and adjusting and feeding the tables of their time.
And when we cook from those pages today, we are not simply recreating history.
We are continuing it.
References and Further Reading
Wason, Betty. Cooks, Gluttons & Gourmets: A History of Cookery. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962. Dover reprint edition, 1978. ISBN 978-0486219315.
Platina, Bartolomeo. On Right Pleasure and Good Health. Edited and translated by Mary Ella Milham. Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1998. ISBN 978-0866982044.
Scappi, Bartolomeo. The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570): L’arte et prudenza d’un maestro cuoco. Translated by Terence Scully. University of Toronto Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0802096248.
Scully, Terence. The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages. Boydell Press, 1995. ISBN 978-0851156115.
Albala, Ken. Food in Early Modern Europe. Greenwood Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0313319621.
Wheaton, Barbara Ketcham. Savoring the Past: The French Kitchen and Table from 1300 to 1789. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. ISBN 978-0812216070.
Montanari, Massimo. Food Is Culture. Columbia University Press, 2006. ISBN 978-0231137901.
Spicekeeper’s Reflection
The feast I cooked all those years ago taught me something I still carry into the kitchen today. Food history is not preserved in grand descriptions of banquets or exaggerated tales of gluttony. It lives in the quiet instructions written by working cooks — a handful of herbs here, a careful grinding of spices there, a note about the season or the market. Those small details reveal the real kitchens of the past. When I blend spices today at Oak City Spice Blends, I often think about those old manuscripts and the cooks who wrote them. They were not trying to impress historians. They were trying to feed people well. In the end, that is still the heart of cooking.
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