Inn at the Crossroads: A "Game of Thrones" cooking blog

I've long been a big fan of modern attempts to cook medieval cuisine (see: Medievalcookery.com, University of Chicago Press' The Medieval Kitchen, and all the various scanned, historic cookbooks available through Wikipedia). There's something about the cultural anthropology of food that just really appeals to me. Plus, I love the way historic cookbooks assume you know how to do then-basic parts of household labor and will start a recipe with instructions like, "First, butcher and dress a pig." Oh, okay. Sure.

The Inn at the Crossroads blog combines the geeky joy I get from medieval cooking with the geeky joy I get from George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. The results: A brilliant collection of recipes for dishes mentioned in all five of Martin's novels, many developed using medieval cookbooks and techniques.

In a way, this blog is almost inevitable. I haven't read a series of books this obsessed with the food its characters eat since Little House on the Prairie. Unlike Laura Ingalls Wilder, however, George R. R. Martin doesn't provide much instruction in how to make that food. So bloggers Sariann and Chelsea should get serious props for reverse-engineering recipes for everything from medieval pork pie , to marinated goat with honey, to honey-spiced "locusts" (actually crickets). This is one of those food blogs that's totally worth gawking over, even if you never plan on cooking the recipes.

Thank you, Laci Balfour!

• [k0an]

  FYI, in Google Reader that image is approximately 10 billion pixels wide.

  • [Maggie Koerth-Baker]

    It’s fixed now. Sorry about that. 

• [thebelgianpanda]

  There is some real craftsmanship in those recipes and photos.  I’m bummed I didn’t think of this, but super happy they are doing such a wonderful job.

• [Rich Keller]

  Ha! We had chicken in hocchee last night. It’s a medieval recipe for chicken with grapes. We regularly throw medieval spice mixes in our cooking. I’ll have to see if the local meat market has goat meat. That recipe looks too good to pass up.

  If baking is science for hungry people, does that make redacting these recipes science fiction for hungry people?

• [mati]

  Dinner is coming!

• [tristis]

  I made one of their potted hare recipes for a potluck a few months ago (except it was really potted rabbit) and it was both delicious and impressive. Highly recommended, although it takes ages to make.

• [IndependentGeorge]

  Is there a recipe for Lord Manderley’s Frey Pie in Dance with Dragons?

• [billstewart]

  Fiction series with food?  Two obvious ones that come to mind are Steven Brust’s Jhereg series (dinner at Valabar’s!), and of course Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe detective novels (which even have The Fritz Brenner Cookbook in addition to the fiction.)  

  There’s also Discworld, but you’re less likely to make dwarf bread, at least on purpose, or rat onna stick with ketchup, or the various troll delicacies.

  • [C.J. Hayes]

    You make me want to recreate C.M.O.T. Dibbler’s pies with personality.

  • [Marc Mielke]

    Rat on a stick is AWESOME! Of course we used rat-shaped hamburger with cheese to make it stick…

• [ciacontra]

  I’m quite attached to my copy of ‘Lobscouse and Spotted Dog’, a collection of all the recipes mentioned in all 21 of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin novels (aka ‘Master and Commander’, of which the film with Russell Crowe takes its name).  http://www.wwnorton.com/pob/spottedd/ 

  Made a Spotted Dick for Christmas and my in-laws didn’t know what to make of it.

• [for_SCIENCE]

  Aww, no jellied puppy fetus brains. :(

• [Gavin Fitzgerald]

  For my 22nd Birthday, back in June, my girlfriend and I did a bunch of recipes from IatC, which worked out amazingly! We marathoned the show too, which was fantastic.
   Well save the black pepper sauce, which was some weirdly enticing monstrosity.

  They do fantastic stuff, I highly recommend ye try out their recipes. 

• [MashTheStampede]

  I was drooling over the Concord Grape Pie when I realized that we’ve got deliciously ripe concord grapes growing across the street.   Perfect!

• [chgoliz]

  Cookbooks are my porn, so thank you Maggie for this addition to my online stash!!

  (Note to Gavin: ye is “the”, not “you”.  Except on Talk Like a Pirate Day.)

• [gellfex]

  Martin’s mentions, imagery, and doting on, of food are a fractions of Patrick O’brians.  Indeed, no one can read the 1st novel without the phrase “soused hogs face” being indelibly printed in your memory.  The only food I really remember in Ice & Fire (I’m on the 3rd book) is Arya’s pigeons and perhaps the fish stew in the Iron Isles.

• [Iscah]

  I have the pleasure of knowing these ladies, and have had the privilege of consuming some of the leftovers from the blog’s recipes.  I assure you, everything is at least as good as it looks!  And they’re having a wonderful time with it.  Definitely worth checking out!

• [bklynchris]

  I’ve seen this, it is mind blowing and mouth watering.

• [Nils d’Aulaire]

  It’s no LOTR cookbook.  http://lotrcookbook.com/

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Don’t people in Middle Earth mostly live on bread, butter, cream, honey and beer?

    • [Nils d’Aulaire]

      I’m pretty sure they eat a lot of spaghetti and Rice Krispi Treats too.  You have to read between the lines.

• [Marc Mielke]

  Ah! They are the people doing the Cookbook of Ice and Fire! I was just about to post that someone was doing one and thought I’d make sure…well, good on them!

  One of the easier dishes that was surprisingly good was milk and honey over ice. Very refreshing, even if milk over ice sounds a bit odd.

• [Daemonworks]

  Reminds me of “Leaves of the Inn of the Last Home” – pretty much the same thing, but for the Dragonlance books.

• [iseethefnords]

  I seem to recall having collected several recipes from Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series in my misspent youth.