When I’m not recording That Shakespeare Life, I’m usually researching for DIY History, my YouTube channel where I look into games, recipes, and crafts for Shakespeare’s lifetime that you can do at home. In preparing a new episode, I was going through Hugh Plat's Good Housewives Jewel, a cookbook that was written in 1596-1597. One recipe that caught my eye called for "sweet bread." I ambitiously decided to try and make this recipe, thinking I would be diving into a cake, or perhaps some version of loaf bread. However, as I started to research the ingredients, I was surprised to discover this "sweet bread" wasn't bread at all but instead “sweet bread” was actually the 16th century phrase for the pancreas of a cow. Discovering that sweet bread was not at all a bread, but instead an organ meat, was the moment I decided we definitely needed to know more about this surprising food, and to do that, we needed to bring in an expert, which is why I reached out to our friend and returning guest to That Shakespeare Life,  expert food historian, Neil Buttery,Neil joins us today to share the history and a few recipes for how to cook 16th century sweet bread. 

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