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

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At this point I began to realize that not only was she a terrific oral historian and journalist, but a pretty unusual woman for her time. Dorothy Hartley (1893-1985) travelled the country writing a weekly column on English country living for the Daily Sketch "for which she hunted out recipes, customs and folklore" (Worsley). She seems to have had a quixotic need for solitude and sometimes hung up on friends who telephoned, snapping "I can't talk to you now. It's a sharp and funny compendium of cooking tips and treats, from medieval times to the modern day .

The book suggests a much more varied, rich, and bizarre English cuisine than the stereotype allows, listing native plants and garden plants that were once widely consumed but now are forgotten (e. I cannot recommend this highly enough for anyone interested in food, how it is grown, fed, penned, harvested, cooked, the history of when how and why we eat it. A contemporary of folk historians Cecil Sharp and Florence White, Hartley was part of an active movement to record disappearing English customs, and the oral history she recorded provides the richest part of this work. Have you ever wondered where old saying's come from, for instance, "Hook or by Crook" or how chimneys were cleaned of soot,using a Holly Bush and a horse or bullock, No, well I had the first but, not living in the country,didn't even know a thing about the second one. I'd remembered it as being an epic account of English cooking, from medieval times onwards, interspersed with recipes.The book is unusual as a history in not citing its sources, serving more as an oral social history from Hartley's own experiences as she travelled England as a journalist for the Daily Sketch, interviewing "the last generation to have had countryside lives sharing something in common with the Tudors. The cultural historian Panikos Panayi describes the book as a tour de force, seminal, and richly illustrated; and he notes that Food in England is partly a recipe book, partly a history. She describes some delicious puddings, cakes and breads, including an exotic violet flower ice cream, an eighteenth century coconut bread and Yorkshire teacakes.

There are unusual dishes such as the Cornish Onion and Apple Pie, and she describes some delicious puddings, cakes and breads, including an exotic violet flower ice cream, an eighteenth century coconut bread and Yorkshire teacakes. I was told it was served with roast pork, like Yorkshire pudding is served with roast beef (the sage and apple indicate this), but the marigold is more usually a cheese condiment. Country people," she wrote, "make delicious sandwiches of brown bread and butter with finely sliced up mushrooms (raw), the mushrooms being sprinkled with lemon juice. Where quantities or cooking temperatures have to be specified, these are included in the instructions; otherwise, matters are left to the cook's discretion.When the job was done, the dogs were given a drink of buttermilk "and down they sit, well satisfied". One of the book's most famous passages celebrates a "medieval pressure cooker", made by creating an airtight sealing on a cauldron with flour paste. On its publication in 1954, the book was received with immediate acclaim, and has remained in print ever since. The independent-minded quarterly magazine that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach. It has been extremely difficult to put my finger on what exactly makes the British different, or rather what part of it is endearing for me.