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This month on Around theTable, I have the pleasure of sharing a conversation with architecturalhistorian SarahMilne. She was introduced to an early modern English manuscript in thearchives while researching another project. That text, the Dinner Book of the LondonDrapers’ Company, grew into a project of its own, and her newly-published editionis sure to be of great interest to historians of architecture, civic life, andfood. In April, her research came full circle as she publicly launched her bookat the site of the dining in the manuscript: Drapers’Hall in London. Following my conversation below, Recipes Project editor Lisa Smith, who was able toattend the book launch, shares some comments about the presentation.Sarah Milne speaking in Drapers' Hall, where the dinners take place. Photo courtesy of Sarah Milne.Could you describe the Dinner Book and how youfound it? On what type of project were you working?Ratherunusually, I first came across the Dinner Book as a postgraduate architecturestudent trying to get to grips with the City of London as a place, so that Icould design for it effectively. Walking around its streets, I identified thelivery company (guild) halls as important footholds, entry points into theguilds themselves, and I set myself the task of designing a new livery hall forrecently formed guilds. It did not take me long to figure out that one of thefocal-points of company life was the annual ‘Election Dinner’, when new leadersof the companies were invested in their new roles at grand dinners held in thehalls. For me, in representing guild hierarchies structured within the hall, thiswas a critical moment to design for, and I was keen to research the history ofdinners as much as I could in order to uncover the meaning and cultural contextof these long-standing events. To be honest, my design project was over anddone with far too quickly, but I was able to develop my interest through awritten dissertation. Influenced by Carolyn Steele’s writing on how food shapescities, I wrote to a number of guild archivists enquiring records which wouldgive me insight into the sorts of foods presented at the dining tables of theElection Dinners. I was intrigued by the mercantile guilds’ attitudes to ‘newworld’ products, and the extent to which dinners were experimental orconservative. Penny Fussell at the Drapers’ Company invited me to visitDrapers’ Hall to see a document she thought I might be interested in. That wasthe Dinner Book. At the timeI encountered it, I didn’t really have the skillset to deal with iteffectively, I was not trained in palaeography for a start, but I knew thatthis account book seemed rare and important. Spanning from 1564–1602, thoughmostly weighted towards the 1560s and 1570s, it listed the foods, drinks,suppliers, servants, attendees and their positions within Drapers’ Hall at aseries of Election Dinners. For me at that time, the potential of the document wasto ground City sociability in a place, a space and a time, allowing forpresent-day dinners to be read through the lens of the past. Slowly but surelyI made progress in making sense of the document.It was onlymany years afterwards during my PhD, and several drafts of transcriptions ofthe Dinner Book later, that I was able to say with more certainty why this bookwas important for early modern historians, and suggest its significance forfood historians. The period covered by the Dinner Book was one of particularinstability and change in the City. The Drapers’ dinner records for the closingdecades of the sixteenth century indicate that livery companies recognised thepotential of their annual Election Dinners to reinforce the antiquity ofcorporate authority, inferring a mythical past as a means of legitimizing theirstake in the future. Naturally, the food presented was implicated in thisendeavour, and mostly tended towards traditionally high-status meats such asvenison. Sarah Milne showing the Dinner Book to a Draper. Photo courtesy of Sarah Milne.It is interesting how such a beautiful space(Drapers’ Hall) has such a rich accompanying textual history; that is notalways the case! Is this kind of menu book unique to the Drapers? Do you knowof other examples of similar guild records (in London or elsewhere),particularly ones accompanying an existing architectural space?Though theGreat Twelve Companies shared a common culture of dining and a concern fortheir orchestration, it does appear that The Dinner Book is the only coherentlydetailed document which accounts for a series of these sorts of dinners. It seemsto have been produced as a sort of aide memoire to inform the planning offuture dinners as well as giving an account of what was spent year by year. Theremay well have been other Dinner Books, but they have not survived, exceptingone very partial record from the late seventeenth century. In individual guildarchives and at the Guildhall, the odd account of comparable Election Dinnersof other companies can be found, but nothing quite matches the Dinner Book.I am verythankful for the ways in which the Drapers’ Company accommodated me in theirHall over many years. To be able to research the Dinner Book in near enough thesame location as it was produced, and the kitchens where the dinners actuallyprepared, was quite special. Indeed, though Drapers’ Hall has been rebuilt manytimes, the memory of the sixteenth-century Hall persists in the arrangement ofinterior spaces, so that the present-day main hall where the dinners were eatenis effectively in the same location, and of a similar scale, as it was at thetime the Dinner Book was written-up. Other companies too retain Halls, thoughnone survive from the sixteenth century (excepting the fifteenth-century kitchensof the Merchant Taylors’Hall). Has working with the Dinner Book influenced yourother research interests and recent projects?Myencounter with the Dinner Book affected the trajectory of my working life quitesignificantly. From a focus on architectural design, I shifted to focus onarchitectural history, understanding that the two need to be held in tension,especially when the complexity of a city like London is in view. If it is notalready apparent, I should clarify that I take architecture to be a broaddiscipline concerned with how space is produced by many hands over time. Architectureis always relational, contingent, and, at its heart, it is really about people.In this way, the study of food exchanges and dining practices can be veryrelevant to urban and architectural historians interested in working from theinside out of buildings, or thinking about flows of traded goods in the citymore generally. Indeed, I feel strongly that the link between designers,urbanists and architects on the one hand, and historians on the other, needs tobe cultivated so that cities can be acted within and planned for withsensitivity and wisdom. Spatial ‘micro-histories’ can be very effective inengaging a broad-range of people in deep conversations about the way citieschange over the long-term.Now I workfor the Surveyof London, a group of historians who write histories of London’s builtenvironment, paying attention to all sorts of stories of the capital city andaddressing a huge range of buildings past and present. We tend to work parishby parish, and currently I am working on an especially experimental projectcentred on Whitechapel in East London. We have taken a participatory approachto this project, inviting the public and professionals to enter into dialoguewith us and each other about the area, sharing their research, memories andarchives, as we share our findings, all framed within the context of adigitally accessible online map.Speaking to people, it is amazing to see how often food or dining comes up,especially in relation to migrant experiences of settlement and inter-culturalexchanges. We have been especially excited to commission a film about the localSouth Asian restaurant trade – Changing Tastes.Thanks, Sarah, for chatting with me about such an interesting project! You can follow Sarah on Twitter @sarahannmilne.And now, Lisa Smith’scomments on the book launch.On April 8, I had the pleasure visiting the Drapers’ Hall inLondon to celebrate a book launch for Sarah Milne’s edited volume of The Dinner Book of the London Drapers’Company 1564-1602. Although I’ve visited a range of splendid medicalbuildings, from the Royal College of Surgeons (London) to the AcadémieNationale de Médecine (Paris), this was my first experience of an actual Londonguild hall. To say that the Drapers’ Hall is very grand would be anunderstatement; the marks of power, pomp, and ceremony remain visible tohistorians, even if the main hall is now bookable for wedding receptions.In the introduction to TheDinner Book, Dr Milne describes the ‘theatre of hospitality’; beyond thegrandeur of a hall, the guild displayed its wealth through elaborate feasts. Atthe Election Dinner of 1564, for example, the first course included foods likeswans, pikes, venison pasties, and custards; the second course included lighterfoods, from quails to marchipane; and the banquet course was comprised of sweetitems, like spicebread, wafers, fruits, and hippocras. The necessity of luxurywas so important that the guild hall even had a separate space for preparing thebanquet course—the hippocras house, which was staffed by three servants duringthe 1564 dinner. “Interior of Drapers’ Hall” From Old and New London, Volume I, by Walter Thornbury (1897). Image from Wikimedia Commons.There is no modern-day hippocras house, but the book launchtook place in the same room as the early modern great hall. A modern chefattempted to recapture some of the early modern flavours for us, too, withtreats such as venison pasties and pottage…In her talk, Dr Milne discussed the complicated nature ofspace and public activities in early modern London; the domestic, social, andbusiness worlds co-existed behind the guild hall gates. The great hall may havebeen used for corporate assemblies, but the courtyard house was the Master’sresidence. The parlour was the site of the guild’s day-to-day business. Corporatecelebrations, such as Election Dinners, included entire families: widows,wives, and occasionally young children. And the garden provided the fruits,nuts, and herbs used in creating grand dinners. The Dinner Book is a wonderful window into the food, people, and activities of an early modern guild hall, listing as it does the foods served, the people paid, and the activities undertaken. In preparation for the feast dinner of 6 August 1571, for example, we learn that Treacle the Cook spent two days preparing the meal; that Mr Crowley preached for two days; that the Master Wardens’ wives sold the hall comfits and biscuits; that the grocer Henry Falks provided a substantial amount of luxury spices and dried fruit; and that the hall bought eighty pounds of butter from the market.Thanks, Lisa! If you’d like to feature a project, scholar, or institution on Around the Table, please email Sarah Kernan.