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

Product Information

I loved the whole atmosphere of the Oxford Literary Festival. From breakfast, alongside some of the attendees, who were talking books with each other a mile a minute, to the public event at The Sheldonian where everyone was lively and engaged – I felt I had arrived in a kind of literary heaven.

From its core range of sea salt crunchy crystals and soft finishing flakes to the ever-evolving, blended seasonings and the umami tastes of its seaweed salts, Cornish Sea Salt can suit the everyday amateur as well as the seasoned chef. Available in the UK at Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Tesco, Asda, Morrison’s and COOP, as well as internationally in over 35 countries. 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.So that kind of story about marginal subsistence and starvation got me really interested in food history. Which I thought was dispiritingly top-down. The Guild of Food Writers’ Awards will be presented on Wednesday 6 th September at the Royal Institution, 21 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4BS.

This is a well-researched and interesting examination of the personal experiences of about thirty people living through the English Civil War. It surfs the timeline of ‘national’ events stopping off to update us on the actions, views and contexts of these actors as we go. The book definitely helps the reader get ‘under the skin’ of the War (read ‘a number of local skirmishes’) and experience the conflicting political, religious, class and personal struggles that permeate the lives of these people. 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. 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/Century Dining with Ivan Day https://open.spotify.com/episode/22BHsKHncyk2i6UXEzcIY2?si=92c16fc7a2904e45 The Oxford festival is the most elegant and atmospheric of literary festivals. It’s a pleasure to both attend and perform there.

However, outside of that, the results aren't nearly as good. I suspected that Middlekauff's The Glorious Cause rested too much on 'everybody knows' facts about the American Revolution, and I'm sure that Purkiss has done this here. She's English and writing for an English audience, so I can't say how on-target she is on her assumptions, but I found her brushing by statements as if they were self-evident, and they were not for me. The trained bands of the early fighting are mentioned but not described. I know generally what they are because I've read Haythornwaite's book on the ECW, which goes into them. Here, they're a blank spot. We talked about how he found out about Richard Briggs and his book; the similarities and differences between life and cooking then and now; who may have influenced Briggs’ writing; his death; broiling and other older English words the Brits no longer use but North Americans do; authenticity; and much more. We talked about how she came to live in her Tudor house; how the food changed going in and coming out of the Tudor period; food and the four humours and how ideas about those also changed; favourite cookbooks; fritters; sops; mince pies; cheese; and many other things. 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. 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.

BookBliss

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. Contrary to the title, this is not a history of the English civil war of the 1640’s. It’s a collection of contemporary accounts from original documents focusing on a number of people who were prominent and obscure participants in the historical events. The research was staggering and is documented in FURTHER READING at the end of the book. My undergraduate degree was dual English and History. In various ways, so was my doctorate. The short answer is that teaching English literature is really interesting, because the answer is always different, while in history a thorough look at what’s available to you could lead you to the same answer every time. I find that less interesting than teaching Shakespeare. 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. 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’.

Today Neil talks with Brigitte Webster about her new book Eating with the Tudors which has just been published by Pen & Sword History. I came away buzzing and reassured that we still have in this century a wide ranging community fascinated not just by famous authors (I’ve rarely seen so many concentrated in one place) but by challenging ideas and questions. That discussion of scurvy might have led us quite neatly to Lizzie Collingham’s The Hungry Empire, a study of British imperial history structured around twenty recipes. It was first published under the title Tastes of Empire. I do find it interesting that there has been a rise in ‘housekeeping’ influencers: aspirational cooking, cleaning, folding, tidying, and interior decorating accounts with hundreds of thousands—even millions—of followers. There have been many recent bestselling books on the subject of homemaking, fortunes made. And largely marketed to women. So I sense it as a social pressure still, although my own home life is not particularly traditional.In general, the technique for this is good. She's gone through a lot of primary sources, and found ones with fairly consistent records for an extended period of time, and used them to generate narratives at the personal level, with lots of extensive quotes. There's a lot of contextualization around this, and it pays off. Gold Top as a brand through its company Quality Milk Producers Ltd is a co-operative of farmers to help the Guernsey and Jersey herd dairy farmer and their products. We offer our warmest congratulations to all winning and shortlisted writers and editors. Our sincere thanks go to our members who judged the awards, to our sponsors for their generous support, and to our outstanding volunteer committee who worked tirelessly to