01/01/2024 · 10:48 am

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! I’m only a little worse for wear after a night out in the bustling metropolis that is Levenshulme, South Manchester. Going out didn’t mean I negated on cooking up my annual New Year’s Eve pudding though: this year it was plum pudding (it is still Christmas remember!) which did a great job of lining my stomach. The recipe was of course the one I picked up last year, courtesy of Sam Bilton’s Great Aunt Eliza.

Well what a year it has been with regard to my writing: I wrote a few articles for Country Life (you can read them on my Media page), and my second book Before Mrs Beeton – a biography of food innovator and entrepreneur Elizabeth Raffald – came out in March and it seems to have gone down well. The big news was my previous book, A Dark History of Sugar, won the Best First Book Award at the Guild of Food Writer’s Awards 2023; little old me! Completely unexpected, but very pleased as I’m sure you can imagine.

The blog has continued to do well, receiving more views in 2023 than in any other year, and the podcast has gone from strength to strength; according to Spotify, my listenership has increased by 125%.

I wouldn’t have been able to do all of this without you all reading and commenting, listening and downloading. It is you who spurn me on to keep on making more content, so thank you all very, very much.

A special shout out too to everyone who supported the blogs and podcast financially by treating me to a virtual coffee or pint, or by becoming a £3 monthly subscriber. It’s becoming increasingly more expensive just to have podcasts and blogs these days, so I really appreciate it.

If you like the blogs and podcast I produce and would to start a £3 monthly subscription, or would like to treat me to virtual coffee or pint: follow this link for more information. Thank you.

Some of the foods I cooked up for the blogs this year (L to R: Lincolnshire chine, wigs, Elizabeth Raffald’s flummery, malt loaf, roast venison and 18th century mince pies)

There has been a variety of posts on the blog this year. There were some classic recipes including a step-by-step guide to making steamed sponge puddings, English butter sauce, malt loaf, sago pudding (needs reappraisal in my humble opinion), barley water and roast venison. Of course, there were some unusual recipes gleaned from Britain’s gastronomic past: those delicious teatime treats called Wigs, Elizabeth Raffald’s flummery table decorations, dock pudding, sweet lamb pie, Edward Kidder’s curiously shaped mince pies and, er, porpoise.

The other blog, Neil Cooks Grigson, has very much slowed down as I inch toward the completion of the project, and I only managed to cook one recipe for it. It was a good one though: #446 Lincolnshire Chine. It was the last recipe in the Cured Meat section of the book, so I wrote a little review of it. Many recipes from this section made it into both my personal and professional repertoires.

Just a handful of my podcast guests of 2024 (L to R: Charlie Taverner, Louise Middleton, Brigitte Webster, Kevin Geddes, Marc Meltonville and Jane Steward)

There were some great podcast episodes published too: 19 in all, the most I have made in a single year, taking the number of episodes up to 49! The most popular episode was 18th Century Dining with Ivan Day. Other favourites included London’s Street Food Sellers with Charlie Taverner, Invalid Cookery with Lindsay Middleton, Tavern Cookery with Marc Meltonville and Tudor Cooking and Cuisine with Brigitte Webster. I also collaborated with Sam Bilton of the Comfortably Hungry podcast about tripe. Season 7 kicked off in December with an episode about mince pies and another collaboration this time with Thomas Ntinas of the Delicious Legacy podcast about 18th-century women cookery book writers.

18th Century Dining with Ivan Day was the most popular episode of the podcast in 2023.

So, that’s the look back, and now it is time to look forward to the new year and to what it will bring. New podcast episodes are being lined up and the next episode will be out on 5 January (all things being well). I have two book deadlines this year, so I shall tell you about those as and when I can, and I will – of course – be continuing to write posts for the blogs (though January and February may be a little sparse – those deadlines are looming!)

I hope you have a great rest of Christmas. Remember it doesn’t finish until the 5th of January, so keep eating, drinking and making merry up to then, and beyond.

Thanks again for all of your support,

Neil x

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24/12/2023 · 10:22 am

Negus

Wine, Cyder, Negus, Purl,[1] and Porter;

Are liquors for any Courtier.

The Free-Mason’s Calendar, 1776[2]

Merry Christmas everyone! It’s time for my annual boozy Christmas drink, and this year’s is so good, you can even give it to the kids; if you take Mrs Beeton’s advice (I advise against it, but what do I know). It is called negus; the ingredients are simple, and you are almost guaranteed to have them this time of year: wine, sugar, citrus fruit, spices. Easy.

Its origin lies with the English officer class of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, who got into the very sensible habit of watering down their wine to avoid getting too drunk of an evening. They still wanted something to drink though. It is named after Colonel Francis Negus (1660-1732), ‘a well-connected gentleman’, who, aside from being a noted member of the officer class, was also an MP, and a talented horse rider and hunter, so-much-so he was given the position of Master of the Horse and Warden of Windsor Forest. Quite the chap it would seem. The earliest description known comes in the form of a handwritten note in a 1725 edition of Tacitus’s works. It said: ‘After a morning’s walk, half a pint of white wine, made and hot and sweetened a little, is recond very good. – Col. Negus, a gentn. of tast, advises it, I have heard say.’[3] Initially it was a heated mixture of white wine and water, sugar and then some citrus juice, sometimes lemons, or sweet or Seville oranges, and it hasn’t really changed that much.

Its low alcohol made it especially good for the infirm or chronically ill. One Dr William Buchan in his 1797 book, prescribes claret negus for those with ‘Slow or Nervous Fever’, what we would call depression today.[4] In the book Oxford Nightcaps (1827), the author tells us that a doctor friend of his, a certain Doctor Willich, thinks ‘Negus is one of the innocent and wholesome species of drink especially if Seville oranges be added’. He also recommends lemons, cinnamon, cloves and all-spice. And calves’ foot jelly, which was thought very nourishing to those who couldn’t digest anything too rich or challenging.

Mr Fezziwig’s Ball as depicted by John Leech

Into the mid-19th century, negus settled down as a drink to be enjoyed by everyone, the wine most often used now being port (a drink which had been made popular since the Napoleonic Wars). It is mentioned in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol (1843). When the Ghost of Christmas Past takes Scrooge to show him the wonderful parties put on by his old boss, the kind and caring, Mr Fezziwig: ‘There were dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold Boiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer.’[5] What a sight they would have been!

Isabella Beeton’s considered negus a children’s drink

So inoffensive was negus that it became a popular drink with kids, with Mrs Beeton informing us in 1861 that ‘[a]s this beverage is more usually drunk at children’s parties than at any other, the wine need not be very old or expensive for the purpose.’ Her proportions are 1 pint of port to every quart of water, plus a quarter of a pound of sugar, zest and juice of one lemon and some grated nutmeg. She adds: ‘Allow 1 pint of wine, with the ingredients in proportion, for a party of 9 or 10 children.’[6]

It’s essentially a weak version of my favourite hot-booze drink, smoking bishop, but child-friendly. Hm. I suppose it’s one way to get them to sleep on Christmas Eve night!

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The recipe

Use whatever wine you prefer and your favourite citrus fruit. I went with port and a clementine and added some nutmeg and cinnamon. I must say it was very drinkable.

I’ve metricated the volumes, but the rule of thumb here is 1 part wine to 2 parts water, and you can sweeten the mixture to your taste.

Makes 1.3 litres:

400 ml wine (port, claret or white wine)

Zest and juice of 1 citrus fruit (lemon, sweet orange, Seville orange, clementine, etc)

Spices: ¼ freshly grated nutmeg, a snapped cinnamon stick, a teaspoon of cracked allspice berries or bruised cloves; choose your favourites.

800 ml boiling water

100 to 120 g caster sugar.

Heat the wine slowly with the zest and juice of your chosen fruit, and the spices until scalding hot (but not boiling). Add the hot water, then add sugar to taste. Pass through a sieve into a punch bowl or jug. To serve, ladle into beakers or cups.

One final note before I go: in Jerry Thomas and Christian Shultz’s How to Mix Drinks (1862), there is a very interesting-sounding soda negus recipe. The wine is warmed up with sugar and spices, then left to cool, then soda is added before serving.[7] Worth a try I think!

Notes

[1] Purl was an ale that had been infused with wormwood. Sounds full-on. Potential future Christmas booze post.

[2] Anon. (1776) The Free-Mason’s Calendar: or, an Almanac for the Year of Christ 1776.

[3] Wondrich, D. (2021) The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails. Edited by D. Wondrich and N. Rothbaum. Oxford University Press.

[4] Buchan, W. (1797) Domestic Medicine, Or, A Treatise on the Prevention and Cure of Diseases, by Regimen and Simple Medicines. Edited by I. Cathrall. Richard Folwell.

[5] Dickens, C. (2010) A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings. Penguin Classics.

[6] Beeton, I. (1861) The Book of Household Management. Lightning Source.

[7] Thomas, J. and Schultz, C. (1862) How to Mix Drinks, Or, The Bon-vivant’s Companion. Dick & Fitzgerald.

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22/12/2023 · 10:12 am

Edward Kidder’s Early 18th Century Mince Pies

This post complements the 2023 Christmas special of The British Food History Podcast called ‘Mince Pies’:

As promised on this year’s Christmas episode of the podcast, all about mince pies, here is my pastry recipe and method for making the shaped-mince pies in E. Kidder’s Receipts of Pastry and Cookery. It was originally published in 1721, but I used the 1740 edition of the book (here’s a link to the document). If you go to the end of the book, you will see lots of different minced pie templates, just like the ones below. The idea was that you rolled out your pastry and cut a shape out, then made pastry walls, filled them with mincemeat, placed on lid on top and baked it. Really beautiful, but fiddly-looking shapes, I’m sure you’ll agree.

I felt a little nervous making them, so let me at this point, say a massive thank you to Ivan Day for the advice he gave me on shaping these pies. Ivan has an excellent blog with a fascinating article about mince pies (click this link to read it).

In the Christmas episode, I considered making some of the pie designs in Robert May’s The Accomplisht Cook (first published in 1660), but I found Edward’s designs much easier to extrapolate into three-dimensional pies! However, here are a few from May’s book to give you an idea of the sorts of minced pies he was making:

The Materials

The first thing you need to do is get organised with your templates. I simply took screenshots of the book, printed them out and cut them out. You can make them any size you like. My shapes were around 10cm wide, and I went for the ones that looked the easiest!

Then you need the correct tools for the job. I have collected over the years various pastry tools, both antique and modern. The wheels are called jiggers, which are used for cutting pastry. The antique ones usually come with a crimping tool attached, and these are used to fuse two pieces of pastry. The one I own with what looks like a flat pair of tweezers was particularly helpful for the pies I made here. I used a paring knife to cut out the shapes – the jiggers weren’t appropriate for these smaller pies.

Jiggers do come in handy for cutting out the pastry walls – essentially strips of pastry – I have a tool that’s made up of 5 jiggers on one expandable frame so you can cut several strips of the same thickness in one go.

That’s the tools of the trade, but now let’s look at our ingredients: we need mincemeat (I used the lamb mincemeat, recipe here) but you can use any you like.[1] Then we need some pastry that is mouldable (we don’t want the walls collapsing in the oven!) yet edible.

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Mouldable Hot Water Pastry

I came up with the following recipe, based on one given by Jane Grigson in English Food.[2] It’s very good for moulding, but not particularly delicious, I made a few changes and I think it’s pretty good. It is simple to make, and this was enough for 8 to 10 pies, depending upon how large your templates are (you could, of course, make one large one!)

500 g plain flour

125 g salted butter, diced

125 g lard, diced

75 ml hot water

2 tbs icing sugar

First, rub the butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs. Put the lard in a saucepan and pour the hot water over it. Heat gently, but be careful – you don’t want it to boil and splutter. Stir in the icing sugar and when it is dissolved, make a well in the centre of the flour-butter mixture and pour into it three-quarters of the hot liquid. Cut the liquid in with a knife, then pour the remaining hot liquid to pour over any dry patches that remain. Once all of the water has been added, give the pastry a knead (leave it to cool a little if you need to). It should be smooth, pliable and waxy. Cover with cling film and allow to cool completely, but do not refrigerate.

Constructing the Pies

Now you can roll out a third of the pastry thinly – aim for the thickness of a pound coin, 2 to 3 millimetres – and cut out your bases. Now roll out another third into a long strip, long enough to go around the perimeter of your shapes. To do this, use a piece of string to trace around the shape. When the appropriate length, use a ruler to cut your strips at your desired thickness. I went for 2 cm, but I could have gone thicker than that, I think.

Now the fiddly bit: brush the edges of the bases with plain water and glue the sides on. Use your finger and thumb to pinch them together, and then crimp them with a crimper tool if you have one. Repeat with all of your shapes and place in the fridge for a few hours to firm up. When firm, roll out the final third of the pastry and cut out your lids.

Fill your pies with your chosen mincemeat, brush the rims of your pies with water and fix on the lids in the same way as you did the bases. Make a steam hole and place back in the fridge for 30 minutes to firm up again. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 200°C.

If you like, brush your pies with an egg wash before you bake them for 25 minutes, or until a good golden-brown colour. If you are making large pies, turn the heat down to 175°C and cook longer: you should see or hear the filling bubbling, telling you it is ready!

Notes:

[1] Though it is best to use a low-sugar recipe, not a gloopy one from the supermarket shelves. I recommend Jane Grigson’s orange mincemeat or Mrs Beeton’s traditional mincemeat.

[2] See Oldbury Gooseberry Tarts on the other blog.

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20/12/2023 · 6:57 am

Westmorland Sweet Lamb Pie

This post complements the 2023 Christmas special of The British Food History Podcast called ‘Mince Pies’:

I have written several times about mince pies and mincemeat over the years on the blog. There are my two go-to mincemeat recipes: Jane Grigson’s Orange mincemeat, and Mrs Beeton’s traditional mincemeat, along with instructions on how to make small, individual mince pies. This year, however, I wanted to make an old-fashioned sweet lamb pie, once eaten in  Westmorland in the Northwest of England, a defunct county now making up parts of Cumbria and North Yorkshire. It was one of the last areas of the country to carry on putting meat in its mincemeat mixtures.[1] Like all mince pies of the past, they were not eaten only at Christmas, but much of the year, though because of the dried fruit content, they were associated with wintertime.

I was first introduced to this pie by Jane Grigson, and I made it many moons ago, for the Neil Cooks Grigson blog, I really liked it and have been meaning to revisit it.[2] These pies were not of the small individual type, but large plate pies, baked in a pie plate made of earthenware, tin or enamel.[3]

I’ve based the recipe on hers, but I did make some changes inspired by other recipes found on the Foods of England Project website.[4] The mincemeat isn’t cooked, but because of the booze and sugar content, it keeps very well. Don’t be put off by the meat content, it makes the filling succulent – and you can taste it, but this blurring of sweet and savoury is most delicious, something I have come to embrace after so many years of making historical British food.

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The filling:

This makes around 2 ¼ litres of well-packed filling, but I do intend to make two large pies at least and lots of smaller ones, so scale down if need be. It keeps for months if left somewhere dark, dry and cool; and remember mince pies are for life, not just for Christmas.

500 g lean lamb

200 g lamb or beef suet, membrane and sinew removed (packet stuff is acceptable if fresh is unavailable)

350 g apples, peeled and cored

120 g almonds

250 g each currants, raisins and sultanas

300 g soft, dark brown sugar

100 g chopped candied peel

Juice and zest of 2 oranges

120 ml dark rum

1 tsp salt

½ tsp ground black pepper

1 tsp each ground mace and cinnamon

½ freshly grated nutmeg

To make a truly ‘minced’ meat, you need to chop the meat, suet, apples and almonds quite finely. (You can, of course, use minced lamb, slivered almonds and grated apple and suet).

My ‘minced’ lamb and suet

Mix everything together in a large bowl and pack tightly into sterilised jars.[5] Leave to mature for at least a week before using.

The pie:

These pies were made on pie plates, but you can make them in any flan or pie tin you like. For my 26 cm diameter pie plate I used the following amounts, though the pastry was quite thin, so you may want to proportion things up in line with perhaps 360 g flour. I will leave it to you to judge size and thinness. There are instructions on how to make small, individual mince pies here.

300 g plain flour

150 g butter, or 75 g each butter and lard

75 g caster or icing sugar

80-100 ml cold water

Egg wash: 1 egg beaten with ½ tsp salt

Dice the fat and rub into the flour until breadcrumbs are formed (or use the flat beater on a machine, set to slow), then add the sugar, mix, and add the water slowly mixing and stirring. Bring everything together to form a firm dough. You might not need all of the water. Knead briefly to smooth the dough, cover and then leave to rest in the fridge for around 30 minutes.

Roll out two-thirds of the dough into a round, lift and lay it over the plate neatly. Prick the base with a fork. Spoon the filling in. Again, go with your gut – do you want a thin amount or loads? I added enough to come up to the lip of my plate.

Roll the remaining third of the pastry out into a round. As it rests, wash the rim of the pie plate and place the lid on top, securing it with a crimping tool or fork prongs or with your thumb or forefinger. Cut a steam hole and brush with egg. You can sprinkle a little sugar over the top if you fancy.

Place in the fridge to firm up and preheat the oven to 200°C. When the oven has come up to heat, slide the pie onto the centre shelf and cook for around 35 minutes, or until a good golden-brown colour and you can see the filling bubble through the steam hole.

Best eaten warm with thick cream, or rum butter.

I ate my first piece so quickly, I forgot to photograph it. This is my seconds.

[1] Mason, L. and Brown, C. (1999) The Taste of Britain. Devon: Harper Press.

[2] Read the original post here: http://neilcooksgrigson.com/2014/01/02/388-sweet-lamb-pie-from-westmorland/

[3] Grigson, J. (1992) English Food. Third Edit. Penguin.

[4] Hughes, G., ‘North Country Sweet Pie’, The Foods of England Project. http://www.foodsofengland.co.uk/northcountrysweetpie.htm

[5] To sterilise jars, heat them in the oven for 25 minutes at 120°C. Any rubber seals – or lids with rubber seals, can be sterilised in very hot water.

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10/11/2023 · 1:06 pm

To Roast a Haunch of Venison

Christmas isn’t too far away and the chances are you are probably already discussing what meats you will be roasting on the big day. Well, I am going to stick my neck out and suggest venison. Game used to be a very important part of the Christmas feasting, especially in the countryside, making an excellent centrepiece to the day’s feasting.

Regular readers will know that I love cooking with game, but it has been a while since I cooked some up for the blog. I got the opportunity to cook a nice haunch of venison because I was sent some from Farm Wilder to try out, and my gosh it was good. Apart from the meat being tender and delicious, the deer that make their venison are culled as an important part of land management in Southwest England. Without any natural predators, their numbers are increasing and pretty as they may be, they are very damaging to woodland habitats – in short, they are a menace![1]

A medium-rare roasted haunch of Farm Wilder venison

For more information about Farm Wilder and their venison, click this link.

The important thing when buying a roasting joint is to buy as large a one as possible; large joints always roast juicier and more evenly. Bear in mind that any excess venison can be chopped and made into a hunter’s pie – essentially a shepherd’s pie but with lamb swapped for venison. I’ve suggested a 2 kg haunch but don’t worry if yours is a different weight, I have included a formula for calculating the roasting time in the method. The haunch is the equivalent of beef topside, but I think it is a much superior joint in both tenderness and flavour.

Venison is best marinated before cooking; it adds a complexity of flavour to the meat and makes it even more tender. Many recipes go into great detail about how this should be done using cooked marinades, but I think the best is also the simplest: red wine, red wine vinegar, olive oil and some herbs and spices.

Folk also make a big deal about the meat drying out in cooking (venison being a very lean meat) and there are – again – complex methods to keep the meat moist: larding it with needles or tying sheets of pork backfat or skin around it. These work, but I have found that smearing the joint with plenty of butter and covering it all with smoked streaky bacon works perfectly, adding more depth of flavour; and you get to eat some crispy bacon with your dinner.

I chose to serve my venison with potatoes and parsnips roasted in duck fat, Brussels sprouts, gravy and a fruit jelly: redcurrant is the easiest to get hold of from the shops, but quince or medlar jelly can be used too.

Serves 8:

2 kg haunch of venison

½ bottle red wine

125 ml red wine vinegar

125 ml olive oil

Around one dozen black peppercorns and juniper berries

A bunch of herbs: e.g., rosemary, thyme, marjoram or winter savoury sprigs, 3 or 4 fresh bay leaves

2 carrots, peeled and sliced

2 sticks celery, trimmed and sliced

1 leek or onion, trimmed and sliced

75 g salted butter, softened

Salt and pepper

6 to 8 rashers of smoked streaky bacon

2 tbs of redcurrant, quince or medlar jelly

2 or 3 tsp cornflour

500 ml beef stock

The day before you want to cook the venison, place it in a tub only slightly larger than the joint itself along with the wine, vinegar and olive oil. Lightly crush the spices, tie the herbs with some string and add those too. Make sure the venison is covered – or mostly covered – by the wine mixture then cover and refrigerate. Turn the meat once or twice if it is not completely submerged.

Next day, take the tub out of the fridge a few hours before you want to cook the meat, so it can come up to room temperature. Preheat your oven to 225°C. Calculate your cooking time: for rare meat roast for 15 mins per 500 g of meat plus 15 minutes; for medium 18 mins per 500 g plus 15 minutes.[2]

Now prepare the meat. Spread your vegetables in the centre of the tray and place the venison on top. Dab it dry with some kitchen paper then smear the top with the butter, season well with salt and pepper, then cover the top with the bacon, making sure each rasher overlaps the next slightly.

Oven-ready haunch of venison

Ladle around half of the marinade into the tin and slide the meat into the oven. Roast for 15 minutes and then turn the heat down to 180°C. Baste the venison every 15 to 20 minutes or so, adding more marinade if it starts to dry up.

For the last 15 minutes of the cooking time, turn the heat back up to 225°C, remove the bacon, give the meat one more baste, and let it crisp up at the edges. Take the tin out, remove the meat to a board or dish and cover with kitchen foil. It will sit very happily there as you roast your potatoes and cook your veg.

Now make the gravy. Strain the contents of the tin into a jug and spoon or pour a couple of tablespoons (approximately) of the buttery olive oil layer into a saucepan. Discard the rest of the fat. Put the pan over a medium heat and stir in 2 teaspoons of cornflour. Once incorporated, cook for a minute before adding the juices. Mix to blend, before adding the beef stock, mix again and then add the remaining marinade. Cook for 10 minutes, then add the jelly and season with salt and pepper. If the gravy isn’t as thick as you’d like, slake another teaspoon of cornflour in a little cold water and stir it in. When ready, strain into a warm jug.

Remove the outer mesh covering the joint, slice and serve with the gravy, the crisp bacon rashers and extra jelly on the side.

If you like the blogs and podcast I produce and would to start a £3 monthly subscription, or would like to treat me to virtual coffee or pint: follow this link for more information. Thank you.

Notes:

[1] It is for this reason that I consider venison a vegan-friendly food: we’d have to cull them whether we ate meat or not, so we may as well.

[2] If you like your meat well done, I can’t help you.

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09/11/2023 · 7:04 pm

Free Zoom talk in collaboration with the Museum of Royal Worcester, 15 Nov 2023

Hello everyone. Just a very quick post to let you know that I am giving a talk as part of the Museum of Royal Worcester’s Winter Online Talk series. The title of my talk is ‘Navigating Nineteenth-century English Meals – changing manners and fashions explored through Worcester porcelain’.

The talk is free and can be viewed online via Zoom. It’s on 15 November 2023 at 6pm (UK time). Click here to book your place.

It’s been really fun writing it and looking through the museum’s collection to find some interesting specimens to show and tell.

I do hope you can make it.

I’ll be talking about this item, amongst many others, but what is it? Find out on 15 November! (pic: Museum of Royal Worcester)

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31/10/2023 · 5:54 pm

Book review: A. Cook’s Perspective by Clarissa F. Dillon & Deborah J. Peterson

A. Cook’s Perspective is an investigation into the work of the rather obscure and eccentric 18th-century cook and cookery writer Ann Cook, her methods and her infamous hatred of the popular cookery writer, and her contemporary, Hannah Glasse and her book The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy. The book is essentially a transcript of Cook’s Professed Cookery garnished liberally with comments and insights into Ann and Hannah’s recipes, their cooking methods as well as Ann’s state of mind. The book is authored by experienced food historians and historical cooks Clarissa F. Dillon and Deborah J. Peterson who investigate Cook’s spleen-venting by cooking her and Hannah’s recipes to understand whether Cook’s vitriolic take-down of Glasse has any grounding.

A. Cook’s Perspective is a very useful book – firstly because it’s an edited transcription of Cook’s work (including her bizarre preface which attacks Hannah Glasse in rhyming couplets and long-form poetry) which is very handy for those who prefer to read a book over a digitised PDF. But the book adds so much more than that because Dillon and Peterson really get to work on fact-checking and inspecting the minutiae of Cook’s methodologies by making the recipes themselves – and it’s a mixed bag, sometimes landing in favour of Cook, other times Glasse. Their work also exposes Mrs Cook as a vindictive, petulant, embittered woman, and it gives this reader more insight into the bizarre one-sided acrimony (it is unknown whether Hannah Glasse ever met, or even knew, Ann Cook) which I had previously thought was generally in agreement of Cook’s assessment. The reality is – as usual – much more complex. Having a physical book in my hand allowed me to read Cook’s work more closely (something difficult to do when reading digitised texts online), and it shed light on the evolution and pedigree of some dishes. For example, I spotted elements of Cook’s recipe ‘To make a White Fricassey of Rabbets’ in Elizabeth Raffald’s recipe ‘Rabbits Surprized’, a dish I thought to be totally unique to Raffald.

Dillon and Peterson’s approach of writing comments beneath original prose is a good one: it helps us to understand how some recipes work, and how the writers go about interpreting them. They also demonstrate the importance and benefit of cooking the recipes oneself, rather than simply reading them. There are several occasions too where the authors are at a loss as to Ann’s meaning or point in some of her comments, many of which seem to be nonsensical or simply ‘whining’. By criticising Ann Cook’s own criticisms we do glean an extra layer of understanding of 18th-century cooking.

As someone with an interest in the cookery writers of the 18th century, I would have liked to have seen the introduction, i.e. the backstory, fleshed out a lot more: the two ladies’ biographies, achievements and inter-relatedness. Photos of the food would have helped bring the dishes to life, as would some images, say contemporary artwork, of 18th-century foods being served or prepared.

Overall, A. Cook’s Perspective is a worthy addition to the home library of anyone interested in 18th-century cookery because it provides us with practical knowledge of cooking at this point in history, but it also gives us an almost voyeuristic view of Ann Cook’s psyche and her deep-seated, intense dislike of a cookery icon at a time when the personal thoughts and feelings of female cookery writers are so rarely captured.

A. Cook’s Perspective: A Fascinating Insight into 18th-century Recipes by Two Historic Cooks by Clarissa F. Dillon & Deborah J. Peterson is out now and is published by Brookline Books.

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03/10/2023 · 5:39 pm

A Dark History of Sugar: online talk 26 October 7pm

Hello everyone!

After A Dark History of Sugar won Best First Book at the Guild of Food Writers Awards 2023 last month, I thought I would give a free online Zoom talk about the project and the history. I’ve given the talk several times, but I never did one via Zoom like I did with Before Mrs Beeton. Well, I am rectifying that with a talk on 26 October at 7pm (UK time), and I would really like it if you came. Like last time the tickets are available via Eventbrite.

The talk itself will be about 45 minutes long, but there will be plenty of time at the end for questions and general chat.

Since the last time I did a talk, both Zoom and Eventbrite have changed their packages and I can only offer 100 tickets for this event, so make sure you book quickly. Click this link to book via the Eventbrite website.

I’ll hopefully see you later this month!

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22/09/2023 · 4:52 pm

Sustainable Meat Cookery Part 1: Central Nervous System

This post complements the special podcast episode I made for my £3 monthly subscribers on the topic of sourcing and cooking the organs of the central vervous system – brain, spinal cord and eyes – a most taboo topic. Inside you will find the episode itself as well as my method to prepare brains for cooking as well as a few recipes – should you get your hands on any.

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12/09/2023 · 7:18 pm

A Guild of Food Writers’ Award win!

I have some very exciting news: A Dark History of Sugar did not only get nominated for the Guild of Food Writers’ Awards 2023 in the Best First Book category, but it also won! Bloody hell!

The other nominees in the category were Chocolate Cake for Imaginary Lives by Genevieve Jenner and Cooking: Simply and Well, for One or Many by Jeremy Lee; both brilliant books so I certainly did not expect to win.

Some past podcast guests were there at the ceremony: Diane Purkiss, who appeared on the podcast recently to talk about her book English Food: A People’s History won her category Best Food Book. Nominated in that same category was Felicity Cloake for her brilliant breakfast Odyssey Red Sauce, Brown Sauce. Scroll to the foot of the post to listen to those podcast episodes.

It was a fantastic night. The awards were hosted by chef and Saturday Kitchen presenter Matt Tebbutt, and the award itself was sponsored by the excellent Sea Sisters. Collecting the award was all a bit of a blur as the adrenaline was pumping somewhat, but the guild just released the official photographs (taken by Martin Behrman) so there is actual evidence of it occurring! There were some food-writing royalty at the ceremony too in the shape of Dames Mary Berry and Delia Smith. I was starstruck, let me tell you.

Although I am still reeling, I need to crack on with writing the current book. One shouldn’t rest on one’s laurels now, should they? I’ll be back with a proper blog post soon. Cheerio! x

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