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

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When published, Neil’s blog post with a recipe for sago pudding, will be found at www.britishfoodhistory.com

Roundabouts and Roundheads | Books | The Guardian

We tend to assume, historically, that people’s standard of living and life expectancy just goes on improving on a steady upward trajectory. But this was really not the case. Wretched Faces exemplifies why that was: there was an absolute disaster, demographically, at the beginning of the 19th century, where you had extraordinarily widespread rural poverty, mostly because of the Corn Laws—which were imposed during the Napoleonic War to restrict imports, and kept the price of wheat very high—but partly because of continuing subsistence agriculture and the ongoing Little Ice Age. There are two kinds of food historians. Ones who try out the recipes, and the ones who just copy them down. I’m the first kind. So I got really interested in how very few of us there are—there are honourable exceptions. Others will study without ever making their own bread or their own jam, or trying anything out themselves.A rich and indulgent history, English Food will change the way you view your food and understand your past.

Diane Purkiss’s fantasy dinner: chefs from history show off Diane Purkiss’s fantasy dinner: chefs from history show off

An absolute gem… English Food is a fabulous read. I devoured it with gusto… My review copy will find a permanent place on my bookshelves… a richly entertaining and enlightening social history of England… Superb” - Sunday Times, Christopher Hart Doubtless the UKIP representative’s attitude combined nostalgia for a remembered past with a not unreasonable desire for the government to do something to revive the area’s economy to create a better future for the entire community. There are hundreds/thousands of sadly decayed seaside resort towns across the country (though on the coast, obv) and our best political minds (haha) have for generations failed to provide a solution for their plight.To return to idea of ”restorative nostalgia” with regard to Poland’s past, for example: I mean, crikey. Unless we are talking about a wish to return to the golden days of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, surely Poland’s history has been an endless story of oppression by its more powerful neighbours (since the 18th century at least). Apart from periods of independence between 1919 and 1939, and the post-communist era since 1989, I’m not sure where this nostalgia would come from; unless it is nostalgia for a Parisian garret in the 19th century in which one can plot a romantic uprising against the Russians/Prussians or Austrians.

English Food: A People’s History – HarperCollins Publishers UK

The vicar in the village tells you that the dead that remain in the earth are those condemned to hell. Some people say that the dead riders are wreathed in flames, and their saddles are red-hot iron. Those people say that if you do get any power from the riders, it’s the power of hell and devils. At the trial, those who submitted written complaints will take the stand and give their evidence aloud and under oath. You, as the accused, will also take the stand and your confession will be read aloud. If you like, you can add to it, or deny that you said bits of it, but that might just make you look inconsistent. After that, the jury will decide on your guilt. Elizabeth Raffald with Alessandra Pino & Neil Buttery https://open.spotify.com/episode/0oPYbFhNAfIHOfj6KL9RWC?si=cfdfadbbf32a4d24 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.Weirdly, a lot of food history ignores food preparation, and particularly the material needs of food preparation. There are only a small number of books that focus on the kitchen and utensils, but they’re very important in terms of what you can and can’t cook. The main reason people choose the foods they do is material. So: Do you own a cake tin? Do you have enough resources to get an oven hot enough to bake a cake? Have you heard of cake? I chose this book because it’s one of the best accounts of the way we eat and how that is shaped by what we have and what we inherit in the way of equipment and expectations. 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. 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. One such figure was peculiar to the western Alps. She was the female embodiment of winter, a female figure often called Bertha or Perchta or Befuna. She punished social disobedience and rewarded ‘goodness’. She was always portrayed as an old hag, because she represented cold and winter. It did not take long for intellectuals to note her resemblance to the witches with whom they were familiar from classical literature.

Diane Purkiss - HarperReach Diane Purkiss - HarperReach

It happened through other projects. Firstly, through the work I’ve done on witchcraft. Secondly, through the work I did on the English Civil War. Both of those projects were about trying to get beyond the intellectual history-type position, where the Civil War was caused by people having a rational response to autocracy, and witchcraft trials were caused by people not being sufficiently post- Enlightenment. This is one of two books that really changed my approach to the whole subject of food. Because most books about the history of food focus on what the rich eat—just like most histories of fashion focus on that tiny one percent of society. And that’s fine, if you recognise that it’s all a daydream. But it doesn’t give you a good holistic picture of what the past was actually like.Before our interview began, you said something interesting about how food history is not really about the food. It’s what the food says about those making or eating it. So I guess we are looking at food as a proxy for other social forces or social factors. Did I get that right? Young people who voted to remain in the EU did so for the perceived benefits the bloc delivers to them. Doubtless many of the young who live in seaside towns voted leave; or they have left to build themselves a future elsewhere. I’m not sure if the actual numbers of young/old votes for leave/remain could honestly be described as ‘overwhelming’, though, I agree the difference is significant. 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.