Food in England: A Complete Guide to the Food That Makes Us Who We are

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Dorothy’s friends clearly regret the fact that she left no children, but I relish the fact that she did instead leave us this amazing book. The famine years of the Middle Ages - ‘To realise how desperate was the famine you must know the seasons as the starving peasants knew them - close and vital knowledge. Some of these such as stargazey pie are old-fashioned, but all are practical recipes that can be cooked. The text switches repeatedly from instructions ("To prepare mutton fat for a mutton piecrust, melt it over a bowl of hot water") to historical asides ("Mutton fat was used in the mountain-sheep districts for the same purposes as suet or goose-grease in the valleys").

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.Thus, if currant and sage predominate, the tea will somewhat favour Ceylon; if the lemon balm predominates, it will be a more China cup; if the ‘woodruff’, it will have the smoky aroma of Darjeeling. It's also beautifully illustrated with funny little line drawings by Dorothy Hartley herself, and it's full of her personality and life history, from her school days in a convent to her time in Africa. Front panel clean, chipped to the bottom inner corner, back panel chipped to upper inner corner, absent spine stood in for by a photocopy (printed a little smaller than the original): the parts professionally brought together and made good. She admits it is not a conventional history, since Hartley breaks "the first rule of the historian: to cite her evidence.

A recent BBC Four documentary on Hartley's life and work presented by Lucy Worsley cast some light on the eccentric pleasures of Food in England, which has been in print continuously for 58 years. An irresistible window into centuries of culture, and illuminated with Hartley's own lively illustrations, FOOD IN ENGLAND is an unforgettable tour through culinary history and a unique insight into England's past.Registered office: WSM Services Limited, Connect House, 133-137 Alexandra Road, Wimbledon, LONDON SW19 7JY. with plates and numerous illustrations in the text; maroon cloth, gilt back, a near fine copy in unclipped dustwrapper. Mrs Woolf, wife of the manager, is a very celebrated author and, in her own way, more important than Galsworthy.

pages will keep anyone busy; presenting a massive stepping stone for those interested in the history of food. It was there that she began work on the book for which she is best known, [6] Food in England, leading to its publication in 1954. Hartley's devotion to archaic recipes such as stargazey pie and posset sometimes comes across as mildly crazed. A serviceable English ‘tea’ may be made with blackthorn for bulk, and sage, lemon balm, woodruff (the plant), and black-currant leaves for flavour.When the job was done, the dogs were given a drink of buttermilk "and down they sit, well satisfied". Hartley tells us of four "local methods" for using up plum pudding, including one involving rum butter, though she observes, wryly, that "in districts where they use rum butter the contingency of any pudding being left over is unlikely". I've tried the Christmas pudding recipe that she gives as being "The Royal Family's Christmas Pudding". The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

The Queen's Cheese recipe (1600), to be made between Michaelmas and Allhallowtide, and a huge cheese, nine feet in circumference, made in 1841 for Queen Victoria from one milking of 737 cows. Why English and not British, do not worry dear readers from the other three countries who are part of the British isles, there is a reason why in the book showing how you are covered and described and how by ancestry you are so much a part of this book. She was therefore "startled" to find that almost the whole of the text is "taken up with practical recipes and techniques, with very little historical narrative. It ranges from Saxon cooking to the Industrial Revolution, with chapters on everything from seaweed to salt.g., few people make sea holly toffee anymore, or gather cowslips or English laver or maidenhair ferns and know how they were combined with dozens of other herbs and flavorings); describing fuels, hearths/ovens, and other kitchen technologies, not to mention food sources, that were altered or lost in the Industrial Revolution and in times of war (how much of English cooking survived WWII and rationing? hardback, third impression, thick octavo, paper age-toned else a very good tightly bound copy in a pictorial dust wrapper that is age-toned, markedly so to spine, now protected in a non-adhesive archival film sleeve, the text is free of marking, inscriptions, etc, illustrated, 676pp. With Dorothy’s biographer, Adrian Bailey, I examined letters from a few years she spent travelling in Africa, and learned the tantalizing story of her great lost love, the heavy-drinking bush ranger whom she later said she should have married. Hartley records how apple tarts were made with wide lattices of pastry ("less likely to sink into the juicy pulp"), whereas treacle tarts were made in a gable pattern, like castle windows. Original orange cloth with some marking and fading, slight edge rubbing with small tears at spine ends, otherwise very good.