Melitta Weiss Adamson

Food in Medieval Times is a synthetic work which pulls together information on medieval cookery and approaches to food from a variety of different sources both secondary and primary. Adamson has done a good job at creating a primer on the topic, and I could see this being a useful text to use in an undergrad classroom setting, or as a sort of encyclopaedic reference for the researcher looking to see the uses of a particular kind of food during the medieval period. The writing is however a little dry and somewhat repetitive, with the same facts often repeated in different chapters as if for the first time. It's mostly well foot-noted, but there were a couple of origins for old wives' tales which were given as fact but without citation which made me a little dubious. Recommended for those with a pre-existing interest in medieval food, but it's probably not going to entice those who are new to the topic.… (meer)