"You could cook a meal, but it could be quite a strange meal," said Ross, the chief librarian at Guildhall Library in London and the author of The Curious Cookbook, which looks at a wild range of cookery from medieval times right through to the Second World War.
"It's mostly the medieval recipes where you're going to have a problem — because they were eating things like swans, peacocks, porpoises."
The new book also features a live frog pie that dates from the 17th century.
Ross said the dish containing live frogs was "basically an entertainment" that was served during a high-class meal.
Click here to read this article and listen to an interview with the author from the CBC