A Famous Cookbook From the Middle Ages!

Our Medieval Banquet and Faire is almost upon us, and it will be a day when we celebrate our year-long study of the Middle Ages. On this special day you will use what you've learned all year to step back in time and take on the role of a person who lived during this time period. However, what do we know about the food or the table manners of people who would have attended a banquet? Historians might use another interesting primary source document that has survived  from this period, The Frome of Cury. This is one of the oldest cookbooks written in the English language, and it is believed to have been written by King Richard II's master cooks. It is written in the form of a roll.

You need to know more about King Richard and food fit for a king, so here is the first chunk of a video for you to watch. 

If you want to know more, here are the other two chunks of this video:

Part 2:

Part 3, final part:

Heralds record Coats-of-Arms in books called Rolls of Arms

Coats of Arms are more than just interesting colorful symbols placed on "awesome" shields. A Coat of Arms tells us about people and families that lived hundreds of years ago. In the middle ages it was a herald's job to know which coat of arms belonged to which knight or nobleman. Heralds often kept a record of coats of arms by drawing or painting them on a roll of parchment. It sometimes stayed in the form of a roll and other times it was made into a book. This record-keeping format became known as a Roll of Arms and it generally included rows of painted shields along with the name of the person who owned the coat of arms. Roll of Arms are important primary documents that preserve information about many generations of knights and families dating back to the 1200s and are still being made by 21^st century heralds today.

The above picture is of a page from the Hyghalmen Roll, Germany, dating back to 1485.