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

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Clip of Marguerite Patten inducing a show from the 1950s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgG9oMq4l2U Often as an author, I only occasionally get to meet the public who buy and read my books. The Oxford Literary Festival was a special opportunity for me and certainly one of the highlights of my career – it was an honour I will never forget. Recreating 16th Century Beer with Susan Flavin & Marc Meltonville https://open.spotify.com/episode/6wtjaqTVyqjacVkyvvO3FP?si=b3c29819ed7b453a

I think we’ve come to your final history of food book recommendation. This is The English Housewife by Gervase Markham, dating from 1615. The English Civil War: A People's History provides an account of one of the most consequential events in English history from the perspective of the actors themselves. The book is readable, at times gripping, and the use of extensive quotation gives insight into the feelings and motivations of those involved.Your latest publication is English Food: A People’s History. I found it interesting that you are a professor of English literature, but you write history books. 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.

In this delicious history of Britain’s food traditions, Diane Purkiss invites readers on a unique journey through the centuries, exploring the development of recipes and rituals for mealtimes such as breakfast, lunch, and dinner, to show how food has been both a reflection of and inspiration for social continuity and change. In celebrating the achievements of 2022, the Guild recognises emerging talent as well as some of the best-known food writers and broadcasters in the country. The 16 categories range from books and podcasts through to recipe and restaurant writing and the judging panels comprise a diversity of Guild members.

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Sacla’ started life in 1939 when Secondo and Piera Ercole set up a small family business preparing and preserving the bounty of fruit and vegetables grown around Asti in Italy’s north-west region of Piedmont. Three generations later, and still family run, we have evolved into one of the most passionate and progressive pioneers of Italian food. In 1990, we introduced Pesto to the British shopper and a love affair with all things Italian began… The Elizabeth Raffald Manchester Central Library event at 6pm on 13 September: https://librarylive.co.uk/event/elizabeth-raffald-englands-most-influential-housekeeper/ J Pao and Co. Ltd. is the market leader in growing fresh Beansprouts in the UK. It was founded in 1963 by Joseph Pao who emigrated from Shanghai in the 1950’s. Working as an engineer he dabbled in growing Beansprouts in his spare time, and bit the bullet in 1963 to start commercial production, working from a mews garage in Paddington to supply Chinese restaurants. Within a few years he was supplying restaurants and supermarkets. Family-run Trewithen Dairy produce milk, clotted cream, yoghurt and butter from the Cornish Glynn Valley. A rich and indulgent history, English Foodwill change the way you view your food and understand your past.

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. Excellent relationships with people involved from start to finish in the process ensure the process runs as smoothly as possible. Producing just one product it’s important to get every stage of the process just right. From the mung bean growers, machinery suppliers and engineers, factory staff and customers, whether it’s a few bags or a few tonnes a week, good relationships and a consistent product are key. The original Gold Top Milk is made the traditional Guernsey and Jersey way with the cream on the top, and tastes delicious, the luxurious Gold Top Smooth is a variation whereby the indulgent cream is blended evenly throughout the entire bottle. The Gold Top family includes, butter, cream, ice cream amongst others. 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. The openness and plurality of food culture is an uncomfortable but ongoing reminder of the importance of empire”

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Let’s have a look at these food history books that you’ve selected, starting with The Kitchen in History by Molly Harrison. Could you give us an overview, and why you think it’s worth reading? 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. It’s interesting that the food revolution in Britain has been modelled on food cultures of France, Italy, Iberia: it’s all about the local, the local cheeses, breads, growers. That’s lovely, I’m not against it. But one reason it hasn’t percolated far down the food chain—we still eat more ultra-processed food than any other country in Europe—is because it’s inimical to the food culture we’ve historically tended to have, which is creolized dishes of the kind highlighted in Collingham’s book. 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. The narrative of major events is hard to follow, especially of the political events such as the Great Remonstrance and Pride's Purge which form a prominent part of other accounts of the conflict. The book has a flexible chronological narrative, requiring the reader to do some piecing together. Given that Purkiss states in her preface that an aim of the book is to satisfy the curiosity of readers who know little about the Civil War, I found this a fairly significant failing.