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. This is not a book of recipes but it celebrates food, the history of food and almost, you might say, the philosophy of food.

As for the complaint that country food – or medieval food, come to that – was monotonous, Hartley replied that it was "we", the moderns, who "level out the year into monotony by demanding the same food all the year round! It’s a curious mixture of cookery, history, anthropology, folklore and even magic, illustrated with Dorothy’s own strong, detailed and lively illustrations. It's one of my favourite books in the world, I've read it cover to cover more than once, but it's also a great book to dip into.A fine, bright copy, contents entirely clean, in the unusually well-preserved dust jacket, unclipped, spine mildly sunned, tiny nick to foot of spine panel, uncommonly bright and sharp. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. She admits it is not a conventional history, since Hartley breaks "the first rule of the historian: to cite her evidence. 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. Yet in Hartley's world, the big news was how to scramble an egg using some of the hot ashes from a roasting fire.

A very important historic piece, although I wish she had referred to her sources for each recipe; sometimes she does but for others there are quotation marks and no source cited. Thus you dredge with powders or spices to give flavour, or with acid juices, or chopped herbs, which the pouring fat washes down into the crevices of the roasting meat. On a not entirely related note, I'd just like to say that I love plum pudding and fruitcake, and I'm tired of people's complaints about them. Her appreciation of English food was rare in that she started not with ingredients but with tools and techniques. She was prodigiously well informed on different English methods for making butter, for example, writing of how plunges, paddles, water wheels and dogs had all been used for churning.

On its publication in 1954, the book was received with immediate acclaim, and has remained in print ever since. Second Impression of this definitive history of English cuisine, a "treasury of information on the gathering, storing, and cooking of food from the twelfth to the twentieth centuries.

with plates and numerous illustrations in the text; maroon cloth, gilt back, a near fine copy in unclipped dustwrapper. 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). It's an odd, fascinating, informative, inspiring, amazing book (although it's useless as an academic source because it doesn't have any references or even a bibliography). 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.

some mace, a few cloves, some lemon peel, horse-radish root sliced, some sweet herbs, 6 schaloys [shallots], 8 anchovies, 3 spoonfulls of shred red peppers. The material gleaned on these travels went into her many other books and articles, which eventually covered many aspects and periods of English rural life. It was acclaimed on publication; the contemporary critic Harold Nicolson described the book as a classic. It ranges from Saxon cooking to the Industrial Revolution, with chapters on everything from seaweed to salt. Fine Editions Ltd is a member of the Independent Online Booksellers Association, and we subscribe to its codes of ethics.