Vivendier Book

The Vivendier is a hitherto unpublished manuscript of more than sixty recipes embedded within a miscellany of medical, botanical, household and personal advice compiled in north-eastern France in the middle of the fifteenth century. It is now housed in the Gesamthochschul-Bibliothek in Kassel. Although deriving much of its contents from sources already known to us, it is a unique and instructive collection. Terence Scully, who has already edited the Viandier of Taillevent, and the treatise on cookery by Maistre Chiquart, as well as writing the important book The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages, has done great service to scholars and enthusiasts of medieval cooking by bringing this new source to their attention. The edition provides the original text, a modern translation, critical notes on the language as well as the cookery, comparisons with extant manuscripts that provided source material, and a full introduction.