Throughout a long teaching career in academic life in Holland, Johanna Maria van Winter has specialized in the study of food and drink in the Middle Ages. Many of her articles and papers have been gathered together here within a single volume. Invariably, the work is founded on a close study of written sources, either the medieval records of towns and feudal lords of The Netherlands, early printed cookery books, or the best international scholarship.
Some of the topics discussed are: fasting and asceticism in the Middle Ages; fish recipes in late medieval and early modern cookery books; the use of cannabis in two cookery books of the fifteenth century; green salads in the Renaissance; invalid food in the fifteenth century; regional cookery of the Low Countries; festive meals; dining as a means of communication; and the role of preserved food in Dutch medieval households.
