The art of dining
Ivan Day pulls out an old Habsburg cookbook from his library. The 300-year-old volume is so thick it’s almost a perfect cube, and by some miracle the spine remains intact as he opens it. ‘It’s like a big Harry Potter spellbook,’ he jokes while flicking through drawings of pastry baked in the shapes of dolphins, tortoises, pelicans and griffins. I recognise one design from the half-eaten pie in his kitchen: a cross between a soup tureen and an embroidered throw pillow. Ivan is a curator, self-trained cook and Britain’s premier historian of food. Historic houses and institutions around the world – including the Museum of London, the Met, the Getty
