And along comes another new book about the history of English food! My cup runneth over! This one – The Culture of Food in England 1200 – 1500, by C. M. Woolgar – looks promising, for he begins Chapter One by referencing a word game from late medieval England: A carve of pantlers (those ‘who looked after…
Tag: Culinary History Links and Related Materials
Recipes for Thought
I just received a most intriguing book – Wendy Wall’s Recipes for Thought: Knowledge and Taste in the Early Modern English Kitchen (2016) – and thought that some of you might find it to be of interest. This, from the conclusion, sums up the author’s theory of what a recipe book meant, and likely still means: “The recipe…
A Baker’s Dozen of British Cookbooks for the Christmas Season – Book #13
Throughout history, cooking shows up again and again as primarily women’s work. As a reviewer of Richard Wrangham’s thought-provoking Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human (2009) summarizes, “Here, too, Wrangham apologetically explains, is probably where the global subjugation of women began. Women, he observes, do most of the cooking in most societies (he describes…
A Baker’s Dozen of British Cookbooks for the Christmas Season – Book #12
When I first propped open this massive, and glorious, paean to the history of British food, I came upon “Ryse Of Flessh” (Rice of Flesh). Blumenthal remarks that he had no clue “how early rice had become a part of the English diet. More than a hundred before The Forme of Cury was written, rice was already…
A Baker’s Dozen of British Cookbooks for the Christmas Season – Book #10
Brian Yarvin, an American author, stands out here as the only Yank on this list. And he’s writing about pub food, a very British institution. He aims his book at Americans and could perhaps be accused of dreaming the dream, or interpreting the pub through a lens of nostalgia. Or not? Up comes book #10: 2012 10. The…
A Baker’s Dozen of British Cookbooks for the Christmas Season – Book #9
One of the most interesting things about the two National Trust cookbooks on this extended “Elves’ Shelves” list is the lack of major curry dishes like Chicken Tikka Masala or Balti dishes. In the British countryside, the old ways do appear to remain front and center, as opposed to the more urban areas where curry houses…
A Baker’s Dozen of British Cookbooks for the Christmas Season – Book #8
There is, as you may have noticed, a huge gap time-wise between the first seven books on this list and the last six. That’s because there’s a time period where you see the beginning of the cult of the modern celebrity chef/cook, with a tremendous focus on innovations and experimentation in recipes and, well, celebrity. Television. Italian food….
A Baker’s Dozen of British Cookbooks for the Christmas Season – Book #7
Today you have Jane Grigson again, this time in full force behind the idea that British food is good and worthy of respect. History plays a larger role in this book than in Good Things, making it a delightful read as well as a valuable resource for study. It is one of several books worth looking at…
A Baker’s Dozen of British Cookbooks for the Christmas Season – Book #6
With Katie Stewart’s book, you begin to see a swing toward the time-saving, home-economist tone so prominent in much food writing that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century, aimed at housewives. I’ll be honest here, and you can probably tell before you even read this: Ms. Stewart’s book doesn’t really propel me into…
