The Forme of Cury
Dec. 12th, 2022 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiBook Review: A History of English Food, by Clarissa Dickson Wright
This has been on my to-read list for quite a while, and I was surprised how long it was when I downloaded it. I was expecting a Reithian mixture of education, information, and entertainment, and that was about right. Dickson Wright chooses to begin around the time of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, at a time of relative stability and a court interested in food. Her history blends interesting people, books, foodstuffs, technology and culture.
Early recipe books (starting in the English language with The Forme of Cury) would often be written with an eye on social climbing, and in an age of mediocre literacy might be read out to kitchen staff. Eating was a more communal event, and there's an interesting evolution of dining moving into smaller, more intimate spaces. Beavers were considered "fish" and could therefore be eaten on "fish days". New foods and techniques from Europe and further afield were viewed with suspicion. Sweet potatoes were adopted fairly quickly after their importation, but the English did not take to potatoes in the way the Irish did; forks as eating implements arrived from the Italian stage of the Grand Tour. Indian food arrived quickly after the establishment of the East India Company; the Georgian period was indulgent and entertaining; Dickson Wright marks the Industrial Revolution and the nineteenth century as the start of a decline in food knowledge and nourishment - while those at the top of the social order would have fine dining, the urban poor were often in a worse position than their rural ancestors. And that's before you get to Mrs Beeton, who boiled everything to death, and then some.
As is to be expected, the personality of the author rears itself from time to time, generally on the topic of how things have gone downhill with health and safety; but she acknowledges the paradox that the population as a whole was better nourished during the rationing of World War II than it had been before, or since.
There's a recipe section at the end of the book, which does contain some I'm tempted to try; there is also an extensive picture section. In the Kindle edition, this suffers from being dumped at the end of the book; the insertion of illustrations at more appropriate points in a text in digital editions is something that would improve on plate sections in print books, but the editors haven't quite got their heads around it.
This has been on my to-read list for quite a while, and I was surprised how long it was when I downloaded it. I was expecting a Reithian mixture of education, information, and entertainment, and that was about right. Dickson Wright chooses to begin around the time of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, at a time of relative stability and a court interested in food. Her history blends interesting people, books, foodstuffs, technology and culture.
Early recipe books (starting in the English language with The Forme of Cury) would often be written with an eye on social climbing, and in an age of mediocre literacy might be read out to kitchen staff. Eating was a more communal event, and there's an interesting evolution of dining moving into smaller, more intimate spaces. Beavers were considered "fish" and could therefore be eaten on "fish days". New foods and techniques from Europe and further afield were viewed with suspicion. Sweet potatoes were adopted fairly quickly after their importation, but the English did not take to potatoes in the way the Irish did; forks as eating implements arrived from the Italian stage of the Grand Tour. Indian food arrived quickly after the establishment of the East India Company; the Georgian period was indulgent and entertaining; Dickson Wright marks the Industrial Revolution and the nineteenth century as the start of a decline in food knowledge and nourishment - while those at the top of the social order would have fine dining, the urban poor were often in a worse position than their rural ancestors. And that's before you get to Mrs Beeton, who boiled everything to death, and then some.
As is to be expected, the personality of the author rears itself from time to time, generally on the topic of how things have gone downhill with health and safety; but she acknowledges the paradox that the population as a whole was better nourished during the rationing of World War II than it had been before, or since.
There's a recipe section at the end of the book, which does contain some I'm tempted to try; there is also an extensive picture section. In the Kindle edition, this suffers from being dumped at the end of the book; the insertion of illustrations at more appropriate points in a text in digital editions is something that would improve on plate sections in print books, but the editors haven't quite got their heads around it.