It would be so neat to be able to travel back in time and take a peak at differnt historical periods or better yet, dine on some exotic historic food from one of those long gone eras! Ivan Day’s ability to produce to historic food and recreate historical dining experiences from any era is a gift for dreamers like me. It is often said that Ivan Day can cook historic food for anyone from any era. This is no bluff especially because he has proved time and again with his historical cooking adventures and historic food exhibits that food like fashion and architecture changes with every era.

Ivan Day has a very practical approach to cooking historic food. Of course there are plenty of vintage recipes and cookbooks he could resort to, but he seems to believe that cooking styles from different eras have to be recreated from the way the food is cooked to the way the table is set. Ivan uses period cookery illustrations, antique utensils and other primary sources to re-create the remarkable food of the past.

A Stuart Dessert Table depiction from New Instructions for Confectioners in The Court and Country Cook (London: 1702) book by F.Massiolot,

Ivan Day's Stuart dessert table in the 'baroque court style'

Ivan has had his historic food exhibits displayed in a number of museums like the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of London, Fairfax House, the Bowes Museum and the Rothschild Collection. He draws inspiration from a variety of sources including, pictures, gardening manuals, shopping lists and household accounts for cooking his historic food and the table setting. Following a lot of demands from friends and chefs he has also started to conduct cookery classes that focus on historic food!

There is an amusing anecdote about how Ivan Day fell in love with historic food. As a thirteen year old boy Day ran into an antiquarian bookshop to get away from the rain. Here a specific recipe from a cookery book caught his eye. The Sucking Pig recipe! I guess anyone would give it attention especially when the S was replaced by F in old script!! Evers since then Ivan Day has been addicted to the idea of old recipes! and hostoric food. Ivan Day is quiet busy nowadays! He has even got a project from Director Martin Scorsese to cook up an authentic Victorian era banquet for the film Scorsese is producing about Queen Victoria.

Day says that old recipes and cooking of historic food is actually a way to keep in sight who we really are. Also, according to Day, historic food also takes you to a world of unique recipes and sophisticated cooking technique just waiting to be discovered! I guess, at last people like me who spin yarns in our head about Victorian dinner parties, can actually learn from him about recreating authentic historical food! Just imagine having some of the relevant historic Victorian food on your menu for a Victorian theme party! Fun!

Image Credit

www.historicfood.com