Customer Reviews

All the King's Cooks

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Peter Brears intersperses a thorough examination of Henry VIII's kitchens at Hampton Court with recipes drawn from period sources.

The palace kitchens at Hampton Court were a large-scale industrial enterprise that fed 600-1200 people every day - everyone from the lowliest servant to the King himself. The author does a grand job of describing how the system procured, stored, and prepared immense amounts of raw materials each day.

Interspersed with the description are recipes drawn from contemporary sources that are similiar to what might have been served at the palace. The author also covers Tudor table manners, etiquette, and the ceremony involved in feeding the monarch.

Peter Brears' All the King's Cooks: The Tudor Kitchens of King Henry VIII at Hampton Court Palace is a fascinating read and an absolute must-have reference for anyone interested in Tudor-era foods and eating and/or in royal palace kitchen organization. The level of detail is astonishing and Brears writes with an intimacy of understanding that comes from both his background as a food historian and from his practical hands-on experience conducting cooking demonstrations in the actual preserved kitchens at Hampton Court Palace.

Brears has also included an astonishing number of period and current-day illustrations that are invaluable in understanding how the kitchens were laid out, what they looked like, how the people who worked in them dressed, what their tools and utensils looked like, what table settings looked like, and what some of the food looked like once it had been prepared.

Highly, highly recommended for anyone with an interest in historical cooking, dining routines and etiquette, and in how royal kitchens were organized to fulfill their vital functions.