English Food: A Social History of England Told Through the Food on Its Tables

Product Information

As an introduction to the English Civil War, this book is unfortunately confusing. She starts out chronological, but does not stay that way, and for the last third of the book, until the last chapter, I really wasn't sure where Charles I was or what he was doing, and I don't feel like I came away with a clear understanding of any of the sets of negotiations that went on (and failed), whether between Charles and the Scots or between the New Model Army and Parliament. Most food history is about banquets. In thirty years’ time, when people read the food history of now, they will hear all about the coronation quiche, notwithstanding the fact that it doesn’t really represent a current food trend. Some people will loyally go ahead and make it, but it’s not really a good sampling of 2023 food culture. So I was interested in whether there was another way. I decided to go beyond cookbooks—because most food history is really based on recipe books—to sources for what people were actually eating, and how they were cooking. As late as the Regency period, Diane Purkiss informs us, middle-class dining custom dictated that soup and salad, sweet and savoury, were all placed on the table at once. A typical course might consist of “curry of rabbit soup, open tart, syllabub, macaroni, pastry baskets, salmon trout, sole, vegetable pudding, muffin pudding, larded sweetbreads, raised giblet pie, a preserve of olives and a haunch of venison, and buttered lobster” all arranged around a centrepiece, such as the wonderfully named “bombarded veal”. Once everyone had taken what they wanted, these dishes would be removed and replaced by a different selection and then, in turn, by several desserts. There is no counsel for the defence. If you are found guilty, you could become one of the 30,000–60,000 people who were executed for witchcraft in the early modern era. Let’s suppose that an eager JP has put together a significant number of depositions – complaints in writing from your fellow villagers – and has also interrogated you, and got a confession from you. The next stage is that all this evidence is put to a jury, who decide whether to take it to trial or not.

Sea Sisters is England’s only fish cannery, located on the Jurassic Coast of West Dorset. We are an award winning family run business founded by partners, Charlotte & Angus. We preserve ethically sourced British fish by the method of canning and when we launched our first range in December 21’, we were the first to do so since the 1940’s. Using Angus’ expert palette, we create unique and delicious recipes with native fish that are harvested in season, when they are mature and using low impact fishing methods. The Food Programme, Beans Part 1: Are Legumes the Answer. Presented by Sheila Dillon produced by Natalie DonovanCharles I on the other hand gets a lot of space to breathe, and we get a well-rounded portrait of him. Yet his importance to the broader themes of a revolution in ideas is limited: in fact, he was about the only man in England who didn't realise the world had changed. The Elizabeth Raffald Manchester Central Library event at 6pm on 13 September: https://librarylive.co.uk/event/elizabeth-raffald-englands-most-influential-housekeeper/ Neil will be speaking at the Ludlow Food Festival on Sunday 10 September at 2.30pm, talking all things Elizabeth Raffald: https://www.ludlowfoodfestival.co.uk/ The befuddled King Charles I and his strong-willed Queen, Henrietta Maria, are portrayed in enough depth that the reader can come to understand how they sealed their fates by being unable to recognize a changing reality.

The Guild of Food Writers is the UK’s association for professional food writers and broadcasters. Established in 1984, it acts as a network and showcase for nearly 600 authors, broadcasters, columnists and journalists, including many household names. As an accused witch, you could be tried in a church court, at quarter sessions (local courts), or at an assize court, where you could be condemned to death. The process, however, was similar at every level. Somebody would complain to the local justice of the peace (JP) that you had bewitched an animal, or a foodstuff, or a child. Whether or not the complaint is taken any further depends on how energetic the JP is and how much he believes in witchcraft. I really dislike that kind of historical approach, because it’s completely untrue to the way people behave. I mean, how rational is our current government, I ask you? In many respects, other things that were perhaps a bit more primal were probably at stake. It is with great pleasure that we bring you details of the winners of The Guild of Food Writers Awards 2023 presentation, which took place in London at the Royal Institution on 6 September. You will find full details of the winners and sponsors below. This is a history of the English Civil War, told to a considerable extent through the words of observers and participants. Letters and diaries of people such as Brilliana Harley; tracts by Garrard Winstanley (a leading Digger); the debate at Putney, between leaders and Levellers add a very human element to this history.

The shortlists shine a spotlight on some of the UK’s best-known writers and chefs. Included are Mark Hix for work published in the The Telegraph; Jimi Famurewa and Grace Dent for restaurant writing; and Jeremy Lee for his debut cookbook, Cooking: Simply and Well, for One or Many. Susannah Cohen, Susannah Moody and Claire Ruston are all shortlisted in the Guild’s first Newcomer award. the people of these times, which would seem childish if they were not so savage in their consequences. That people would fight, die and engage in the most appalling cycles of atrocity for such reasons seems almost unthinkable in our time and place.

The political and military aspects are interspersed into the thematic coverage of the social as a sort of structural scaffolding, but not particularly systematically. Lieutenant-Colonel Cromwell, hardly gets a mention in fact. Part of my deduction of a star is due to the fact that these political-military aspects are included so haphazardly that no one seriously interested in that kind of chronological treatment would be much the wiser for having read this account. We get names, fragments of speeches, the occasional movements of troops, but all out of any overarching context. To me at least, the coverage of these aspects is so fragmentary that one has to ask why they were even included. Even if just as a structural context for the social themes, I can't help feeling it could have been done a bit better than this; a coherent high level view perhaps, rather than the interjection of decontextualized fragments. However, it is essential to note that this book is not for the faint of heart. It is a behemoth of a tome, delving into the nitty-gritty details of the war with surgical precision. But for those who are willing to embark on the journey, the rewards are bountiful. The author takes the reader on a journey through the heart of the war, exploring the motivations and actions of all those involved, from the highest levels of leadership down to the common folk.Seduced by the cover blurbs, I thought this was going to be a history of the English Civil War done in a way more accessible than the C.V. Wedgewood classic - a book I found dry and hard to follow, a book where one gets lost in obscure doctrinaire disputes between the various religious dogmas. Imagine you’re standing on a hillside. You look at the lumps in the grass. You are probably wondering what they are, or what they used to be. A panel nearby says that they are prehistoric burial mounds. How to make a steamed sponge pudding: https://britishfoodhistory.com/2023/01/13/how-to-make-a-steamed-sponge-pudding-a-step-by-step-guide/ And of course, there’s the evergreen subject of “the poor”, whose eating habits were fodder for criticism long before Tory MPs were telling the House of Commons that food banks would be unnecessary if such people would only learn to cook. In 1821 the radical William Cobbett dismissed women who bought, rather than made, their own bread as “wasteful … indeed shameful”, apparently giving no thought to the fuel and labour costs involved. The accounts of women going hungry to feed their children a century later also feel depressingly familiar. That’s right. Although it depends on the boulangerie. There’s a chain called Éric Kayser boulangeries—I think there are more than twenty now—which all craft a thing called the baguette Monge or sometimes the baguette tradition, which uses what the French call ‘old dough’ as the basis for the fermentation. So there’s an element of sourdough. But virtually every other grocery will be selling something pretty indistinguishable from what is sold in upmarket supermarkets over here. And if you go to Carrefour, or somewhere like that, you will smell the fresh bread, but it will be what’s called ‘bake off’ in the trade—it’s also called the ‘Milton Keynes process’ that produces the dough, hilariously—essentially they just push a lot of additives into it. It qualifies as an ultra-processed food because of the enormous amount of gluten it contains, and the preservatives, the stabilisers, the fat… it can just about be sold as ‘bread’, but you’re not supposed to sell it as a ‘baguette’.