Hunting for Medieval Cooks in Art

Medieval artists rarely knew quite what to do with cooks. When they appear at all, it is in the smallest of roles, so tracking them down means hunting through manuscripts, misericords, and stained glass.

In the most unexpected places — the margins of manuscripts, where illuminators added their own little doodles, or the carved misericords tucked beneath the hinged seats of choir stalls — kitchen equipment sometimes takes a starring role. The margins of one richly decorated English psalter show two knights in earnest combat, one armed with a kitchen knife, the other using a pot lid as a shield and a ladle as a lance. A misericord in Manchester Cathedral turns the world upside down: the hares are doing the cooking, simmering a hound in a stewpot while the hapless huntsman is trussed up on a spit over the flames. Real, recognisably human cooks are rarer still, but they do occasionally appear. A monastery’s book of benefactors from 1380 includes a double portrait of “Master Robert,” the abbot’s cook, and his wife Helena — who paid three shillings and fourpence out of her own purse to have her husband included.

Even the Bayeux Tapestry, for all its focus on great political and military events, devotes real care to cooking. The scenes of William the Conqueror’s men preparing a meal shortly after the Norman landing are depicted with the same meticulous detail as the battle scenes and Harold’s coronation.

Browse all historical mystery titles by M. J. Westerbone at westerbone.com/books.