Cocatrice and Lampray Hay is the title for this edition of the Corpus Christi College, Oxford MS F 291 which contains ninety nine original fifteenth century recipes written in English (showing signs, the experts claim, of East Anglian provenance). The recipes are remarkable for their close attention to detail and much greater information about quantities of ingredients than similar collections from earlier centuries. They include dishes such as the famous cocatrice or basilisk, which is a combination of pig and chicken constructed as a fabulous beast, to the more mundane, but more cookable, blancmanges, stewed oysters, croustades, pies, venison, beef and chicken dishes. The edition gives the original text, a translation into modern English, a full commentary and notes for the modern cook who wishes to interpret each dish in his or her own kitchen.
Constance Hieatt's work in editing and interpreting medieval English recipe texts is of long-standing repute. She has published An Ordinance of Pottage with Prospect Books and Curye on Inglysch (with Sharon Butler) with the EETS. Other works include Pleyn Delit and Libellus de Arte Coquinaria. She is professor emeritus of English, University of Western Ontario.
