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vcmwI've been ploughing through "Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking" by Kate Colquhon.
I am not an expert in any of this stuff, but on the few areas where I feel competent from prior reading to judge (i.e., spice stuff where it comes up, some of the discussions of market practices that I can compare to things in Hubbub) it seems to be very concerned with accuracy. The bibliography is very impressive, and the work seems to be based on SCADS of primary research.
Some favorite bits that stick in memory so far: Tudor fondness for pumpkin pie, King Charles II getting to eat "cream ice" (ice cream), descriptions of frothing chocolate with the little stick and how some people did eat it with hot red pepper in it early on (like they do still in some Mexican recipes), noble ladies at court making tiny fancy sugar confections for feasts, the crazed variety of "cream ice" prepared in the early days of its invention (which contrasted very amusingly in my mind with the ongoing bit in Good Omens where the kids think about how in America there are more than 3 flavors of ice cream). Also, Catholic rulers eating whale and porpoise during feasts that fell on fast days.
I love especially that the author comments on different regions and social classes having tastes that changed at different speeds and in different ways from the London nobility. Most of the focus during the early bits is on how the very rich ate (this makes sense, as they had the only cookbooks and written diaries, by and large), but enough contrasting things are mentioned that you never start to get the impression that people were eating in Wales or Scotland or even the London market towns the same things that the top court nobles were eating in London. You get reminded that most people were starving on dark bread and maybe some cabbage often enough to really appreciate how bizarre the panoply of food at feasts was.
I'm really not doing this book justice - it is immensely entertaining and smoothly written and conjures up vivid pictures from the text. It's also got some dandy illustrations.
I am not an expert in any of this stuff, but on the few areas where I feel competent from prior reading to judge (i.e., spice stuff where it comes up, some of the discussions of market practices that I can compare to things in Hubbub) it seems to be very concerned with accuracy. The bibliography is very impressive, and the work seems to be based on SCADS of primary research.
Some favorite bits that stick in memory so far: Tudor fondness for pumpkin pie, King Charles II getting to eat "cream ice" (ice cream), descriptions of frothing chocolate with the little stick and how some people did eat it with hot red pepper in it early on (like they do still in some Mexican recipes), noble ladies at court making tiny fancy sugar confections for feasts, the crazed variety of "cream ice" prepared in the early days of its invention (which contrasted very amusingly in my mind with the ongoing bit in Good Omens where the kids think about how in America there are more than 3 flavors of ice cream). Also, Catholic rulers eating whale and porpoise during feasts that fell on fast days.
I love especially that the author comments on different regions and social classes having tastes that changed at different speeds and in different ways from the London nobility. Most of the focus during the early bits is on how the very rich ate (this makes sense, as they had the only cookbooks and written diaries, by and large), but enough contrasting things are mentioned that you never start to get the impression that people were eating in Wales or Scotland or even the London market towns the same things that the top court nobles were eating in London. You get reminded that most people were starving on dark bread and maybe some cabbage often enough to really appreciate how bizarre the panoply of food at feasts was.
I'm really not doing this book justice - it is immensely entertaining and smoothly written and conjures up vivid pictures from the text. It's also got some dandy illustrations.
