How To Cook A Peacock: Le Viandier: Medieval Recipes From The French Court

by Jim Chevallier

Overview

In the fourteenth century, French kings prized such fare as peacock, storks and herons. Guillaume Tirel not only cooked these dishes, he left a book on how to do it. Le Viandier has survived in at least four different versions. Now Jim Chevallier has translated the so-called Fifteenth Century version, making it available to recreational medievalists, food historians and students of medieval life.

The "How to Cook a Peacock" series now also includes "How to Cook an Early French Peacock" (from the early medieval period) and "How to Cook a Golden Peacock" (from the same century as Taillevent's work, but decades earlier).

Product Details

BN ID:	2940000801406
Publisher:	Jim Chevallier
Publication date:	12/29/2009
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	198 KB

About the Author

Jim Chevallier is both a performer and a researcher, having worked as a radio announcer (WCAS, WBUR and WBZ-FM), acted (on NBC's "Passions", and numerous smaller projects) and published an essay on breakfast in 18th century France (in Wagner and Hassan's "Consuming Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century") in addition to researching and translating several historical works of his own. It was as an actor that he began to write monologues for use by others, resulting in his first collection, "The Monologue Bin". This has been followed by several others over the years. Work on an historical novel led him to the subject of historical food, starting with the essay mentioned above and "How to Cook a Peacock", a new translation of Taillevent's "Le Viandier". Two collections based around 18th century menus and recipes followed (in the series "Apres Moi, le Dessert"). The discovery that Marie-Antoinette did NOT bring the croissant to France ultimately led him to the person who did: August Zang, also Austrian and a fascinating figure in himself. The second edition of "August Zang and the French Croissant", revised and much expanded, is now available. His interest in the eighteenth century has also led to research on police and criminal matters of the period, some of which is available in "The Old Regime Blotter I: Bloodshed, Sex and Violence in Pre-Revolutionary France".