I had to test drive a few techniques including making almond milk, an essential medieval Italian ingredient. The spice trade in the 14th century doesn’t compare to Amazon Prime. I sourced ingredients at specialty food stores and online outlets that ship overseas, so not precisely an authentic medieval experience. Read about it or live it? For me, there was an obvious route to living the past: making dinner.

Beatrice, my protagonist, contemplates a similar choice when she is forced to choose between medieval and modern life. To make that sensory connection come alive for myself and for the story, I needed to live it, not just write about it. It goes straight to the visceral-literally. Something essential was missing.įood is a bridge to understanding the past. I wrote about the food but I hadn’t tasted it, and certainly hadn’t tried to cook it either. I’d been spending a lot of time with The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy, and many of the dishes described there had found their way into the book. Three years into writing The Scribe of Siena, I started to get really hungry. The recipient of a Publishers Weekly starred review, Winawer explains here the variety of early Italian food (and painstaking research) that went into her novel.

In her debut work, Melodie Winawer created an historical novel, mystery and love story that transports readers-and her protagonist, neurosurgeon Beatrice Trovato, to fourteenth century Tuscany.

The Medieval Kitchen by Odile Redon