Our Tudor kitchen from Winkhurst is a working kitchen:  we prepare food on most days, cooked over the open fire using the traditional methods and equipment and often have tasters for you to discover the variety and surprisingly delicious flavours of Tudor cooking.  We demonstrate the seasonal food eaten by the family of a tenant yeoman farmer - the people who would have lived in our Bayleaf farmhouse in the early 1540s.  So it is possible to taste much of the seasonal food we prepare:  butter and cheese made during the summer by hand, and spread on griddle bread cooked over the fire; fried “chewits” (pastry filled with spinach, onion and other vegetables); pottage containing seasonal vegetables and herbs, including many older varieties of vegetable and less familiar combinations of sweet and savoury (try beef and prune pottage with walnuts).  Much of the produce used in our recipes is grown in our period gardens.  Herbs played an important part in the Tudor peasant’s diet, helping to enhance the flavours of what would have been a fairly unvarying menu, and we grow plenty of unusual ones here at the Museum, such as winter savory, lovage and alexanders.  The Tudors used many different varieties of green leaves, not just spinach or kale, but also nettles, Good King Henry, fat hen, coleworts, red and green orach - all of which can be tasted at different seasons in our kitchen. 

We follow closely the seasons and the ritual year, as people in the past through to Victorian times would have done, particularly in the countryside.  During the fasting weeks of Lent and Advent we do not serve eggs or meat for example, and often have fish being prepared on the “fish” days, Fridays and Saturdays in the 1540s. 

All our cooks, both staff and volunteers from the Interpretation Department enjoy working in the kitchen and undertake many other domestic kitchen demonstrations such as cleaning, preserving, collecting firewood and managing the fire, brewing ale, picking herbs and vegetables as well as spit roasting meat over the fire or bread baking in the wood fired bread oven.  Sometimes we are very modern for the 1540s and put hops in our brewing to make the increasingly fashionable drink called beer!

We are able to operate a traditional kitchen where you can taste samples of Tudor food because we have a modern, fully equipped kitchen attached to the building, which complies with the Environmental Health standards and enables us to store, prepare and serve all foodstuffs under suitable conditions.  We follow stringent procedures and undertake training as required by the Environmental Health Dept who carry out regular inspections.

And while we are on the subject of food, don’t forget we also often run day courses on topics such as herbs, meat preparation, Christmas food and domestic household activities – see Rural Crafts Course Details