The preparation of food is an intimate act, as is feeding others. Women are the first food providers we know. The act of feeding from the breast was and is normal, and provides an infant with its first sustenance. To medieval people, breastfeeding would have been a common, everyday sight. It was also lauded in images of the lactating Virgin – Maria lactans – Mary feeding the infant Jesus. From then on women, as far as we can tell, were the primary food providers in the families of common people. It is not until we reach the level of the aristocracy, or in later medieval times, the haute bourgeoise, that we begin to see cooking become the province of professional male cooks. The majority of people were fed by a wife, mother, or other women if the food they ate was prepared in the home. In some places, such as England, women also provided the drink (Vaughan 2011). Food was and is one area in which women had power within the family. Sometimes that power was seized and acted upon in a refusal to eat – such was the case with ‘holy anorexia’ – most clearly explained by Carol Walker Bynum (1987). Women eating are sometimes shown in artwork, occasionally reported in tales, but more frequently framed in terms of gluttony: women and men eating too much. The Church steadily preached against gluttony, morality plays and didactic writing warned of its danger (Knight 1983; Vigarello 2010).