With a vast array of packaged goods, fruits and vegetables from around the world now available to us, no matter the season, our diets are far removed from those of our ancestors and we would likely struggle to sustain ourselves with their foods as much as they would struggle to recognize ours. Exploring some of the meals typical of the past – from the relatively limited choices on offer in prehistory to the variety of ingredients that began filling shelves after the Second World War – presents an unusual perspective from which to trace a history of the nation and here we invite you to join us for a five-course sweep through 2,000 years of culinary change.
Tasting the Past by Jacqui Wood – Celtic and Roman dishes
Celtic-style clay-baked trout
Experimental archaeologist Jacqui Wood has stretched repeatedly into antiquity to devise recipes of the sort that would have sustained the Celtic tribes of prehistory. Interspersed among the dishes she presents in this book are notes on cooking methods, including evidence that meat – from joints of lamb to fish, birds and even hedgehogs – would have been wrapped in river clay and transported on a plank of wood to the fireside to dry out. Once dried the whole lot would be placed into the fire, where the wood would burn away and the meat would be roasted in its juices. For a modern take she suggests stuffing a trout with ramson bulbs (or leeks), butter and salt, then wrapping it in layers of ramsom or leek leaves, a water and flour paste, grasses and finally clay or foil, before baking it in an open fire or oven.
Stuffed by Pen Vogler – Anglo-Saxon Britain
Bean and ham stew served with bread and ale
There is scant information on the early medieval period but it is thought that most families at the time were ‘free’, meaning they were broadly self-sufficient, working their own land or living as tenants, while about ten per cent of the population was enslaved to a lord or abbey. The earliest English cookbook, the 1390Forme of Cury, opens with what would have been a staple meal for generations – a stew of broad beans and bacon which, Pen Vogler points out, continues to exist today in the form of pea and ham soup. Bread and ale would also have provided valuable calories, particularly for those in urban areas, with barley giving way to wheat as the predominant grain once the Normans arrived.
A History of the World in Ten Dinners by Jay Reifel and Victoria Flexner – Tudor England
Tudor tenderloins of venison and food as theatre
Henry VIII was a keen hunter and venison often featured on his table, but it is notoriously difficult to cook well. Among the recipes featured in A History of the World in Ten Dinners is a sophisticated method from the 1596 Good Huswifes Jewell by Thomas Dawson which suggests boiling the tenderloins in bouillon before plunging them into ice-cold water, drying and seasoning them, then wrapping in bacon and roasting until the bacon is cooked. Throughout the Tudor era food reflected the social hierarchy, with vegetables considered poor man’s fare and elaborate dishes taking centre stage at banquets. Favourites included the cockenthrice (half a pig sewn to half a chicken), a peacock served in its own feathers, or a pie that was opened to release live frogs onto the table.
Stuffed by Pen Vogler – The Enclosures Acts
The development of allotments and reliance on potatoes
One of the most revolutionary changes to the British diet came about owing to the Enclosures Acts. These peaked in the late 18th century and were justified on the basis that, with a growing population, landlords needed to take responsibility for a more efficient food system. Common land became more intensively farmed but paid labour on them tended to be seasonal, plunging much of the rural population into poverty and leading to the development of allotments. Stuffed explores the impact of the laws, including how the need to grow the most filling and reliable crop in the smallest amount of space saw the potato replace bread as the staple food, with the perils of such a reliance only coming to the fore in the famine of the 1840s.
Elizabeth David Classics by Elizabeth David – new ingredients in the 20th century
Mediterranean Cuisine
Credited with introducing new ingredients to the British home cook, and guiding them fuss-free through preparation and cooking methods, Elizabeth David transformed mealtimes for many a household and her books became much-loved classics. As Jane Grigson points out in her introduction to the omnibus edition Elizabeth David Classics, the timing of her work was fortuitous as rationing had ended and moderately prosperous housewives, in the absence of servants, found ‘a kitchen labour that was also a kitchen freedom’. As they began to discover the joy of providing leisurely home-cooked meals, they turned to David in droves, adopting recipes such as quiche Lorraine, experimenting with herbs and learning to make dishes rich with less-familiar produce such as courgettes and aubergines.
