Image: Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domain
Le Menagier de Paris
- Year
- ms
- Era
- Undated
- Origin
- France · Europe
- Language
- French
- Category
- Medieval European
Le Ménagier de Paris is a late fourteenth-century household manual composed in Middle French by an anonymous elderly Parisian bourgeois, ostensibly for the instruction of his young wife. Combining moral guidance, domestic management, gardening, and an extensive culinary section with menus and recipes, it stands as one of the richest surviving sources for medieval French cookery and urban household life, circulating in manuscript before reaching print in the nineteenth century.
Cooking from this book
Blancmanger
Signature dishFew dishes capture the refined domestic world of this late fourteenth century Parisian household manual better than blancmanger, the celebrated white dish of medieval Europe. A pale, delicate preparation of shredded poultry simmered with almond milk and rice, sweetened and sometimes gilded for the table, it appears among the festive menus the anonymous burgher set down for his young wife. Its presence here marks the book as a window onto the polished bourgeois cookery of late medieval France.
An editorial note on a dish associated with this book, written for The Coquinist. It is not a reproduction of the book's recipe.
