Scott Stull

Using a medieval cookbook from late fourteenth-century Venice, Dr. Stull made a recipe using a cooking pot modelled on an archaeological example from the same time period. The recipe here was spiced millet with pork.

Dr. Stull made a late fourteenth-century recipe called Brewet George, made with grilled chicken and stewed onions. The cooking pot has a distinctive set of lines, based on fourteenth-century examples recovered from archaeological excavations in Paris. This lines may be a way to ensure even cooking in these pots, as it allows a visual guide to which side of the pot is facing the fire.

Roman cheese molds are found archaeologically across the span of the Roman Empire. This cheese mold was made following archaeologically-recovered examples, and the  cheese was made following recipes from Columella, who wrote in the first century AD. The ceramic vessel can be used to make pressed cheese, which was salted and preserved allowing it to be shipped beyond the local area of cheese production. Fresh cheese, which can be produced just using a wicker basket, must be eaten shortly after being made and so cannot be shipped long distances.

One of the oldest known items used in cheese production, identified through residue analysis, is a cheese strainer from Poland that is 7,000 years old (about 5000 BCE). Dr Stull reproduced this cheese strainer, which has the unusual characteristic of having a large opening in the lower end of the funnel-shaped strainer, and determined that a large, soft curd, like that used in making Brie cheese, could be successfully made in this unusual vessel.