During the last centuries of the Middle Ages there was, all throughout western Europe, a veritable frenzy for gastronomy, for enjoying the pleasures of taste in new and unusual ways. As so it happens nowadays with Michelin star chefs, the then cooks of kings, popes and great nobles began to write down their recipes, which hadn’t been done since De re coquinaria of the roman Marco Gavio Apicio. In almost every country, the elite culinary masters wrote cooking books such as the Viandier de Taillevent, in France; the Form of Curry, in England; or the Il Libro de arte coquinaria from Martino da Como in Italy. In the Iberian Peninsula the oldest text containing one of these recipe books is preserved precisely at the Historical Library of the Universitat de València, and that is the Llibre de Sent Soví, containing 72 recipes from the remote bases of our culinary culture. Although the preserved copy is dated from the beginning of the 15th century, it has been proved that it is based on an older lost original, probably dating back to the 1324, which this year will make it its 700 anniversary.

Without a doubt, this is a good enough reason to celebrate accordingly, with a proper exhibition dealing with the complex topics of medieval cuisine and their diets and its multiple facets. The exhibition Gastronomía medieval. El Llibre de Sent Soví i la cuina als segles XIV y XV will be structured in three different sections, dedicated to, respectively, ‘Cuisine to read. The recipe books and its ingredients’; ‘Medieval stoves.  The kitchen as a working and creative space’ and ‘Eating together in the Middle Ages. The universe of the table’. This way we’ll be able to follow the path that food took from arriving to the houses of our ancestors, going through its complex processing and ending up with its tasting in good company around the table.

Numerous pieces from not only Valencian museums and archives but also from Spanish and European facilities will illustrate this journey of the senses, including the Sent Soví text itself as well as other related elements, such as banqueting accounts, cookers, mortars, trivets, gilded ceramic plates, cooking utensils, cutlery, jugs, glasses, goblets and even some foodstuffs from the 15th century which, almost miraculously, have been preserved. On top of it all, images from the gothic art illustrating these moments as well as interactive montages will be added to bring the visitors to a lost world of taste and smell.