Anglo-Saxon Staples
Fruit – figs and grapes, small apples (crab apples), plums, cherries and sloes
Vegetables & Grains – wheat, rye, oats and barley, carrots, ‘Welsh carrots’; or parsnips, cabbages, burdock and rape, onions and leeks, wild garlic
Legumes – peas and beans
Herbs and Spices – ginger, cinnamon, fennel, celeriac, cloves mace and pepper
Honey
Wine & Mead ‘apple-wine’ (probably a form of cider) fruit juices including apple, pear and plum, herbal ‘teas’ and infusions, beer and ale
Nuts hazelnuts, acorns, almonds, walnuts
Fish – herring, salmon and eel, pike, perch and roach, flounder, whiting, plaice, cod and brown trout, oysters, mussels and cockles
Meat – pork, chicken, duck and goose, ducks, pigeon, plover, grouse, herons, goose, hare and rabbit, venison, wild boar, beef and veal, mutton and lamb, goat and kid
Anglo-Saxon Dishes
Small Bird and Bacon Stew with Walnuts or Hazelnuts; Pan Roasted Venison with Cherries; Lamb and Apricot Stew; ‘Fenkel in Soppes’ (Braised Fennel with Ginger); Nut and Leek Stew; Lozenges or Curd Cheese Pastries … to name but a few.
To download a PDF of authentic Anglo-Saxon Recipes go here for more inspiration
How To Make Lemon Posset – A Medieval Dessert
Other Useful Websites
The Tudors is a mine of information on all things relating to the Tudor period including such recipes as Almond Jumballs, Taffatty Tart and Poor Knight’s Pudding.
For your Elizabethan banquet and a vast list of dishes visit
Crow Pie for a great collection of recipes, a glossary of British cuisine and food, calendars detailing farmers markets throughout the UK.
You’ll even find the World Carrot Museum online that will introduce you to the wonderful world of all things of Daucus Carota (Latin for carrot)
Ivan Day’s Historic Food – another great site with lots of information and he even runs cookery courses:
Rediscover Devilled Kidneys, Kedgeree, Beef Cobbler, Apple Charlotte and much more at Good British Food
And Finally …
For me the definitive history of English food and a great source for recipes is … 700 Years of English Cooking … although currently out of print you can find second hand copies online. Author: Maxime McKendry, Published: 21/01/1994 Publisher: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press, ISBN: 9780802132963
Another fine tome on English food is social historian, Dorothy Hartley’s , Food in England. First published in 1954 it combines personal and oral history with practical cooking techniques to give a glimpse of how food has been prepared since medieval times. It continues in print to this day and includes many ‘nose to tail’ recipes and tips that many ‘sustainable’ chefs will find useful and, if nothing else, is a fascinating read.
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