A weighty volume arrives in the post from the depths of Dartmoor. The accompanying note is characteristic of its eccentric publisher, Tom Jaine. Promoting – if that is the word – his latest publication, he declares “the recipes are by no means all ghastly and I recommend you look at the chapter on sauces, particularly the cold store sauces which are an interesting take on our love of pickles and bottles of acidulated goo”. Such a weak encomium is beguiling and I have to admit to being thoroughly beguiled by Peter Brears’s Cooking and Dining in Medieval England (Prospect Books).

Many of the recipes seem over-reliant on vinegar, which forces one to realise that the arrival of the lemon must be as important an innovation in British cookery as that of the potato or the tomato. But the book shows – partly through brilliant strip cartoons that illustrate the ritual of a medieval banquet – that the medieval banquet was sophisticated and well mannered. It seems that our impression of it as a scene of carefree debauchery is rather wide of the mark.