Food History- Joint Session

Alena Minko - Frumenty: a European Recipe in the Medieval Culinary Tradition (lightning talk)
This research is devoted to one recipe from medieval culinary tradition – frumenty. In general, it was a wheat porridge made with milk and eggs, sometimes colored with saffron. Thickness and yellow color were its characteristic features. My research analyses this recipe to establish its content and variations and to see if it was an English specialty, as it is sometimes believed, or a European phenomenon that belonged to the medieval culinary culture overall. For that, cookery books from England and France dating from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries are taken as source material. The recipes are investigated to establish this dish's exact preparation and alterations. Menus which often were written alongside recipes are investigated as well to put frumenty into a wider context of medieval banquets, in particular the place of this dish among other foods and the occasions when it was served. The ingredients are closely analyzed to see the cultural and socio-economic connotations behind them. English recipes are compared to French ones to see if they relate to each other or are completely different. 


Carolyn Tillie, How Innovations in British Silversmithing Shaped our Dining Tables 
This paper examines the evolution of cutlery from the 18th to the early 20th century, focusing on the impact of the invention of Old Sheffield Plate (OSP) and its subsequent decline with the advent of electroplating. The discovery of OSP by Thomas Boulsover in 1743 led a revolution in affordable luxury metal goods, enabling the burgeoning middle class to acquire sophisticated dining items previously reserved for the elite. The paper details how OSP—produced by fusing copper with silver—transformed the market for service ware, making such items more accessible and diverse. The paper also explores how OSP catered to various societal needs, from luxurious travel sets for the aristocracy to practical, portable military kits. The rise of rail travel and the consumer revolution further fueled demand for glamorous dining solutions. However, the introduction of electroplating in the 1840s, which allowed for a thin layer of silver to be applied over cheaper metals, ultimately led to the decline of OSP. The paper concludes by linking these historical developments to broader trends in urbanization, technological advancement, and shifts in consumer behavior, illustrating how the interplay of craftsmanship and innovation shaped the accessibility and aesthetics of the dining table during this transformative period.