UHTRED’S FEAST is a portmanteau, which of course is more of a Lewis Carroll thing than a Bernard Cornwell thing. It is a short story collection and a cookbook --- two for the price of one.

Anyone who is any kind of a home cook likely has had this experience: you go on Google, put in the ingredients you have on hand, and start looking for recipes. When you find something promising, you open up somebody’s food blog, and then you’re confronted with something that is not the recipe. It is usually a wodge of text explaining the backstory of the recipe. Maybe it’s something that the author ran across at a small village restaurant in Tuscany. Perhaps it’s an original concoction from their dearly departed great-grandmother, who, with her 15 cats, has gone on to her eternal home.

All of it is sweet, heartfelt...and exactly the last thing you want to have to wade through in order to get dinner on the table, as your spouse is glowering at you and the children are rolling on the floor with exaggerated hunger pangs. All you want is the stupid recipe. (And then the recipe calls for French-fried onions, and, of course, you don’t have that in the house. Drat.)

"UHTRED’S FEAST is a companion work. You want your companions to be amiable, to not ask for much, and to be entertaining and interesting. It accomplishes those goals thoroughly."

The above is not what you get in UHTRED’S FEAST. The recipes are separated from the short stories, which is a relief. (One of the stories is about eels, and there is an eel pie recipe, but my best guess is that even your most ambitious home chef doesn’t have a surplus of eels sitting around.) The stories are about what you would expect: afterthoughts and other matter that was left out of the majestic Last Kingdom series. They are all told by Uhtred, Lord of Bebbanburg; one is a tale from his childhood, one from his time as a young warrior in King Alfred’s retinue, and one from his later career. You will want these if you’re a Cornwell completist. This is, emphatically, not the first book you should read in this series.

As far as the recipes go, if you’re looking to create something for your next medieval gaming tournament, this is the place to go. They’re not what you would call authentic. The recipe for the aforementioned eel pie calls for almond milk, which would have been in short supply in 10th-century Northumberland. A few of them are not far from what you normally might make. I think I am going to steal the idea of putting caraway seeds on pork ribs the next time I have the smoker running.

UHTRED’S FEAST is a companion work. You want your companions to be amiable, to not ask for much, and to be entertaining and interesting. It accomplishes those goals thoroughly.