In the 14th century, King Richard II’s cooks compiled a book detailing the different recipes of the time.  The book is one of 40 that has been digitally scanned and placed on the Internet.

Forme of Cury, which was written in 1390 in Middle English, details more than 200 recipes that were cooked in the royal household, including blank mang (a sweet dish of meat, milk, sugar and almonds) and mortrews (ground and spiced pork).

The work, which will be carried out using a state-of-the-art high-definition camera, will begin next month and is due to be completed by late 2009.

Though the University of Manchester’s John Rylands University Library will be placing their scan online in 2009, there are other versions, such as at Project Gutenberg and on Greg Lindahl’s site that you can view now.