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There have been a few programmes on British TV in recent months about medieval, renaissance and tudor cookery, often with well-known chefs doing their own version of recipes. Clarissa Dickson-Wright used a recipe book prepared for Richard the second at the end of the fourteenth century, Antonio Carluccio used the first Italian cook book to be published (mid-sixteenth century) and Heston Blumenthal created his own versions of feasts from various periods. I was watching his Tudor feast programme last night, and he made butterbeer (which also appears in the Harry Potter books), frog blancmange, a cockentrice and rice pudding. A 'cockentrice' was a mythical beast made from different animals sewn together - Henry V111 apparently gave a feast for Francis 1 which had a cockentrice made out of the front half of a pig sewn to the back half a chicken, but Heston added a lamb and a goose as well. That was probably quite tasty but frog blancmange sounds pretty nasty, definitely worse than squirrel stew. Although one of Heston recipes for his medieval feast - bulls testicles - doesn't sound much better...

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