Food in England: A Complete Guide to the Food That Makes Us Who We are

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There are unusual dishes such as the Cornish Onion and Apple Pie, and even recipes for fungi, from common field mushrooms to puffballs.

She relished fried cockles and bacon at the seaside; Welsh oatcakes cooked on a girdle; lardy cakes in Oxfordshire; "ancestral" apple pies; and waffles, which, she pointed out, had been made in England since the 12th century. Food in England, "a treasury of information on the gathering, storing, and cooking of food from the twelfth to the twentieth centuries" is widely regarded as the definitive history of English food and cooking techniques (ODNB). On its publication in 1954, the book was received with immediate acclaim, and has remained in print ever since.Her other major historical publications were her six-volume Life and Work of the Peoples of England, written between 1925 and 1931, and her 1931 book Medieval Costume and Life. Then we began skipping about all over the place, just like Dorothy herself in her role as the roving reporter for rural England in the 1930s.

When the job was done, the dogs were given a drink of buttermilk "and down they sit, well satisfied".Thousands of these harmless little Furze-pigs are run over by motorists on the roadways at night; they do not bolt when frightened, but roll up, lie still, and are crushed to death. I was startled to discover that almost all of the 676 pages are taken up with practical recipes and techniques, with very little historical narrative. One of my favourite sections – with a very pleasing illustration – is on the different shapes used to decorate open tarts. Make a custard mixture of eggs beaten in milk, season strongly with pepper, salt and thyme, a very little chopped sage, and a lot of marigold petals (the common yellow marigold).

Most of the chapters address aspects of English food, whether types of food such as meat, eggs, fungi, and bread, or ways of dealing with food such as salting, drying and preserving. As well as visiting the rambly old house with its garden full of fruit where the adolescent Dorothy first began writing and drawing, we visited a restaurant run by an old schoolmate of mine who restricts himself to ingredients from within a twenty mile radius, just as the Tudors did. A fascinating cookery source-book full of recipes, anecdotes, household hints and history that is now recognized as a culinary classic. The Hogarth Press where I’m working, is in the heart of the literary world, with authors coming in all the time. It’s a combination of food history, recipes, general household advice, bits of personal memoir, opinion, and amusing or interesting quotes from old books.I was really struck how much Dorothy’s friends still seem to miss her, and the nature of their memories.

The work is thus effectively, Worsley argues, an oral history, as Hartley interviewed "the last generation to have had countryside lives sharing something in common with the Tudors. I don’t think a sparrow could make a meal off a Welsh trotter, but in the larger breeds of sheep, the trotters are almost as meaty as a pig’s).the American word "piecing" for a snack taken in the hand, has been preserved since it left England with the Pilgrim Fathers. The Guardian, 11/2/2012) During the 1930s, "Hartley toured the British Isles by bicycle and car, with pen, pencil, and camera, writing weekly articles for the Daily Sketch on country people and their trades.