Nov. 13--Robert Hoare appeared remarkably unfazed as he sat beside a blazing fire inside the historic Hampton Court Palace, dressed in the bulky clothes of a 16th century working man.
As huge flames belched searing heat, Hoare sat on a wooden stool beside the giant stone hearth, turning the metal spit onto which a slab of meat was skewered like a colossal kabab. He told visitors the roast wouldn't be ready for another three to four hours.
"This great cathedral of cooking had six roasting fires," he said. "It's the most ridiculous way of cooking ever invented -- all that heat being wasted." But, when the sprawling castle was commissioned 500 years ago, in 1515, by an equally sprawling King Henry VIII, electric rotisseries hadn't even been dreamed of.
"Henry was using a ton of wood a day in each of these six fires," Hoare pointed out. "It was seasoned oak -- not the stuff you just buy from a shop -- just so he could say, 'I'm the sort of king who gives my servants roast dinners twice a day.'"
Britain may have a reputation for boring, bland cuisine, but, in fact, the spotlight recently has been turned on its centuries-old tradition of culinary excellence.
Using medieval recipes, Richard Fitch and Marc Meltonville -- palace employees with the unique job title of "food historian" -- are resurrecting centuries-old traditions. They've been joined by a renowned and curious chef, Heston Blumenthal, who has put many of the dated dishes on the menu at his prestigious restaurant in central London, a 30-minute train ride away.
The men's mutual quest evolved over several years. While Hatch and Meltonville were unearthing shards of 500-year-old kitchenware to learn more about what life -- and, in particular, cooking -- was like in the palace's heyday, Blumenthal was poring over medieval cookbooks.
"We took old recipes to see what they were like and to try to cook them as close as possible (to the original)," Blumenthal said of the experiments conducted alongside the two historians.
After plenty of trial and error, Blumenthal introduced an intriguing range of age-old dishes to guests at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, his top-rated restaurant in tony Knightsbridge. Three of the menu choices date from the late 14th century, when they were recorded in "The Forme of Cury," a very early list of recipes written on a scroll of calfskin parchment.
"'The Forme of Cury' is a cookbook whose frontispiece says it was compiled by the cooks to Richard II somewhere around 1390," Meltonville explained. "It is held up to be the first collection of recipes ... in English that survives today."
Those very early dishes include a starter named Frumenty, a mix of grilled octopus, smoked sea broth and pickled seaweed, and Sambocade, a dessert that includes poached pear, goat's milk chocolate and candied walnuts.
Probably the most intriguing offering -- and certainly the most eye-catching -- is one that Blumenthal calls Meat Fruit, an appetizer that looks exactly like a tangerine but is actually a cleverly disguised serving of chicken liver pate. The chef created it after Meltonville told him about Pome Dorres, a recipe from a cookbook written in about 1430.
Deciphering the early English recipe took work. It began, "Take Fylettys of Pork, grynd hem wyl." The modern-day translation: "Take fillets of pork, and grind them well."
The original dish, concealed inside what appeared to be a golden apple, was concocted to delight royalty.
"They (the cooks) were looking for ways to intrigue, to impress and to entertain," Meltonville explained.
Blumenthal said Meat Fruit quickly became the most photographed food creation in the world. The dish's history and recipe feature in the chef's award-winning cookbook, "Historic Heston Blumenthal."
Home cooks may, however, find many of the recipes daunting.
"It's not intended to be a cookbook that every recipe can be followed," Blumenthal said. He pointed to hay-smoked mackerel with lemon salad as one of the easier ones, though many may find it difficult to source the necessary 500 grams (1.1 pounds) of "meadow-fresh hay."
Back in suburban Surrey, Meltonville told of his extraordinary efforts to replicate medieval culinary practices. He once traveled to the Canary Islands to get cochineal beetles to use as red food coloring. In the kitchens, he cooks in copper pots identical to those used four and five centuries ago.
"Our items are not props," he noted. "We're quite fussy about the equipment."
The palace map appropriately pluralizes "kitchens." Located near the impressive central courtyard are 55 rooms in which roughly 200 kitchen staff members toiled. Guests can peek inside them as their audio wands explain how the place functioned.
"One-third of the ground floor was referred to as the kitchens," Meltonville said. "It's the wine cellars and the beer cellars. It's the bakery, the pastry house. It's the guys in the butchery chopping up meat."
What he called "a food factory" had a singular purpose: turning out two meals a day, each feeding roughly 600 members of the court.
"(It was) the higher-ranking noblemen and higher-ranking clergy, the men who run the army and all of their assistants and their assistants' assistants," he observed.
Even the lowliest members of the court feasted on roast meat. The palace's annual provisions included a staggering 8,200 sheep, 2,330 deer, 1,870 pigs and 1,240 oxen.
In contrast, the average Tudor family subsisted on a diet of primarily vegetables and grains, often made into stews.
Hampton Court Palace (hrp.org.uk/hamptoncourtpalace) is open year-round. Adult admission in high season is about $30.
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal (www.dinnerbyheston.com) is in the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park hotel. Lunch and dinner are served daily.
Jay Jones is a freelance reporter.
