Q&A | ‘Every new venue brings with it a chance to learn new things’

For the first time since the house’s £3m restoration, visitors to Handel Hendrix House in Mayfair, London, will be able to experience a kitchen filled with the sights and smells of Georgian cooking using recipes from the 1747 cookbook The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy by Hannah Glasse.

The Georgian food demonstrations will take place at Handel Hendrix House this Saturday and Sunday, 28 and 29 September 2024 – entry to the events is included in the entry price to the museum.

Marc Meltonville is a consultant food historian who will be demonstrating the Georgian cooking methods prevalent during the era that the composer George Frideric Handel was alive.

How did you get into authentic historic cooking?

Many years ago, as a young education officer in a museum, obviously reading my Museums Journal each month, I had a phone call from a man who said he was a food historian putting a team together to try cooking Tudor food in the newly refurbished kitchens of Henry VIII at Hampton Court. I said I was fine where I was. He said it would be fun, and anyway it was only for a week.

How have you found yourself at Handel Hendrix House?

The work I do is well known as are the many venues and eras that I have studied. I get lovely random emails from all sorts of exciting sites. In this case I know the director of Handel Hendrix House, Simon Daniels, as he was also working for Historic Royal Palaces some years ago, so we already knew each other.

Is the food you'll be preparing inspired by Handel specifically?

The evidence for Handel’s love of food is well known, but the specifics of his daily diet is not. We are having to use recipes of the time, taking into account his pan-European life. This first delve into food at the museum will focus on Handel, as we are using his kitchen. Jimi Hendrix will have to wait for further events, perhaps looking at the menu of the cafe that was below his apartment.

What most excites you about the coming event?

Having spent over 25 years recreating historic food on three continents, every new venue brings with it a chance to learn new things. I am always looking to add to our knowledge. Also, I am a massive fan of baroque music.

Can you tell us more about the hot chocolate demos you're doing?

It is almost always a drink. There are only a couple of Georgian recipes that are not drinks, and they use chocolate as an additional ingredient. We know Handel was served hot chocolate for breakfast, which was very common at the time for a man with money.

What's your favourite aspect of Georgian cooking?

It’s damn good. What’s not to like – it comprises the rise of French cookery combined with fantastic ingredients. It is a fascinating period. The old styles of food and eating and the heavy spices of the past are giving way to lighter, better planned dishes combining delicate tastes with rich sauces. We are starting to eat à la française, in the French fashion.

Do you do other historic cooking demonstrations?

The list is ridiculous. Palaces in England, Northern Ireland, America and Poland. Castles and stately homes. Homes of dukes and earls, cottages belonging to simple farm workers. A 16^th-century yeoman farmhouse and a 17^th century victuallers. Colonial breweries in America, a farm in the depths of Tipperary. A purpose-built chocolate kitchen of George II, a small stand, like a glass sided box in Japan. Oh yes, and in a pit full of burning logs next to Stonehenge.

Have you made any discoveries when researching recipes?

Yes, luckily, or I would be out of work. Most of our work is research based and becomes the focus of papers and lectures. The actual cookery we see as our "lab time", a chance to test out our ideas. If this can be done as a public event, then it brings this work to a wider audience.

This year’s main paper was on the "science of craft", so we were looking at the instructions in cookery, which are very scientific in their results, explained in a simple manner that anyone can follow. How much salt is enough in a brine? When an egg floats in it. Fresh eggs sink in water. This simple piece of kitchen lore is all about specific gravity.

Your favourite historic recipe?

I am fickle that way, it is usually something that I am working on. I rather like Roman street food at the moment.

Future plans?

For no real reason I have become more and more involved with the study of historic drinks. I still work on a lot of food projects, but beer and spirits have figured a lot lately. I have been working on a project over the last three years to build and test a Tudor brewery to produce beer from the 16^th century and to test it for its nutritional values.

I also spend a couple of months a year at a recreated 18^th-century distillery in America where we use period equipment to created early spirits such as a Rye Whiskey from a recipe belonging to George Washington. Next year I might be getting to work on Roman beers. Who knows.

The Tavern Cook: Eighteenth-Century Dining through the Recipes of Richard Briggs, by Marc Meltonville, is published by Prospect Books in 2023 and also available via Amazon. To see his cookery demonstration, visitors need a ticket to Handel Hendrix House this weekend