Introduction Chapter 1: Prologue: The Land After the Romans The Early Church The Countryside Livestock Open Field System Women and the Law Chapter 2: Anglo-Saxon Gastronomy Foods and Fasts Cooking the Food Food for the Elite Feast Halls Herbal Knowledge The Famine Years Chapter 3: Norman Gourmets 1100-1300 The Normans The Earliest Recipes Medieval Sauces Spice and Splendour Colouring The Four Humours Fasting Fish Preservation Game The Kitchen Fruit and Vegetables The Anglo-Norman Cuisine The Significance of the Cuisine Chapter 4: Anarchy and Haute Cuisine 1300-1500 Famine and Feast The Black Death The Forme of Cury A Country Household The Medieval Housewife Milk Drinking Pilgrim Food The Aristocratic Diet The Peasant Diet The Peasant Diet The Church The Wars of the Roses Chapter 5: Tudor Wealth and Domesticity The Reformation Royal Proclamations Tudor Farming Food of the Star Chamber Tudor Cooking Preserving Wealth and Commerce Class Chapter 6: A Divided Century Civil War Gentlewomen's Secrets The Bedford Kitchen The Rise of the Market Garden The Accomplish't Cook New Beverages Samuel Pepys John Evelyn The Rise of Capitalism New Thoughts on Farming Cow's Milk A Coronation and Patrick Lamb, Court Cook La Varenne Chapter 7: Other Island Appetites Ireland Early Medieval Ireland Late Medieval Period The Potato and Famine Modern Period Scotland Early Agriculture The Food The French Influence The Eighteenth Century The Role of Women Scottish Cookery Wales Early Riches The Gentry Cattle Droves Welsh Food The Twentieth Century Chapter 8: Glories of the Country Estate Enclosures Change and Display The Technology of Cooking Tea Time The French and Hannah Glasse Sea Travel White Bread and Potatoes Women Cooks The Country Estate Parson Woodforde Chapter 9: Industry and Empire A Leap Forward The Disappearance of Peasant Cooking A New Town Servants and Cooks Jane Austen and the Brontes Breakfast Street Food Fish and Chips The Food of the Poor Chapter 10: Victorian Food Isabella Beeton Beeton's Book A La Russe French and British Cooking Cheap Imports Convenience Food The Rise of the Fancy Biscuits Drinking Milk Reasons for the Decline of British Cooking Chapter 11: Food for All Food for Heroes Working Class Food Milk Crisis J. Lyons & Co. Ltd. First World War Social Upheaval British Canned Food Diet in the Thirties Rebirth of a Cuisine New Technology and Middle Class Cooking Second World War The Age of Austerity Cordon Bleu Fifties Food Elizabeth David Going Ethnic Chapter 12: The Global Village Health Foods Fast Food Fast Food Diet Towards the Millennium Farming Crisis World Trade The Essential British Cuisine Rebirth of the British Cuisine Appendix I: Wild Food Plants of the British Isles Appendix II: The Traditional British Cooking Notes Glossary Glossary of Conversions Picture Credits Select Bibliography Index
This delectable volume traces the rich variety of foods that are inescapably British and the thousand years of history behind them. Colin Spencer's masterful and witty account of Britain's culinary heritage explores what has influenced and changed eating in Britain-from the Black Death and the Reformation to the Industrial Revolution, the rise of capitalism, and the current pervasiveness of prepackaged and fast foods. The book also shows that in the twenty-first century, British food is experiencing a glorious resurgence, fueled by television gurus and innovative restaurants with firm roots in the British tradition.
Colin Spencer is an author and playwright and was food editor for The Guardian for thirteen years. He is the author of Vegetarianism: A History and co-author of The Faber Book of Food.
"A stimulating work... What did the Brontes dine on at Haworth Parsonage? How did Jane Austen's family cook prepare the sauce? Colin Spencer will tell you. His book is a joyous, lively mine of information." -- Times Literary Supplement "A book so absorbing it may even stop the reader from falling asleep after Christmas dinner." -- London Times "One of the most fascinating and riveting reads this year. Go buy." -- Scotland on Sunday "Never has there been such a breathtakingly comprehensive, wide-ranging and fascinating food history as this stonking great tome by Colin Spencer. The amount of research involved makes the brain boggle." -- Daily Mail "Sure to become a classic." -- The Independent Magazine " British Food describes the glories -- and the decline -- of the nation's cuisine over the centuries... Spencer traces the country's lamentable decline in cuisine through the Reformation, Puritanism, and the Industrial Revolution... Modern Britons would not recognize the impressive lists of ingredients their ancestors used." -- Library Journal "[Spencer] ably covers a millennium and more, reflecting intelligently on the dramatic, and often sudden, dietary developments wrought by political and economic change... Spencer's rich lode of information about British food justifies his subtitle's claim that its present vigor caps off 'an extraordinary thousand years of history.'" -- Claire Hopley, Washington Times "Spencer's interesting book is a worthwhile addition to the food history literature. Recommended [for] all levels." -- Choice "Ten reference books every food loer should own...#10 British Food" -- Waitrose Food Illustrated " -- Gastronomica
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