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One Family and Empire Christmas Pudding
The King's Christmas Pudding made from the 1927 recipe published by the Empire Marketing BoardTowards the end of our previous post The Pudding King we touched on the subject of plum pudding as a potent...
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A Forked Stick for the Cookold
'A bean for the kinge, a pease for the queen, a cloave for the knave, a forked stick for the cookold and a ragg for the slutt. ' All these objects were concealed in the twelfth cake which Henry Teonge...
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Stephen Hales's Syllabub Machine
Dr Stephen Hales FRS (1677-1761)Many years ago while working on a paper on the subject of syllabub, I came across a reference to an ingenious invention by a certain Dr Hayles for making this frothy,...
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Tavern Feasting in Bristol, Christmas 1788
As well as turtle imported into Bristol from the West Indies, 'British Turtle' is listed on this fascinating 1788 Christmas bill of fare from a Bristol tavern. Was British turtle, the popular...
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My 2013 Food History Courses
An authentic Victorian Wedding Cake ornamented with gum paste motifs printed from original nineteenth century moulds . Make and decorate a cake like this on my Confectionery CourseFor those of you who...
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Feast Your Eyes
A sugar paste church based on one originally made for Queen Victoria;s ball supper in Hatfield House in 1845I spent a great deal of time this summer working on Feast Your Eyes, the Fashion of Food in...
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Supper with Shakespeare
A banquet of sweetmeats. This sugary assemblage is dominated by a 'standard' in the form of an edible banquetting house sited in an edible knot garden. Marchpane garden 'knots' are filled with...
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An Aenigmatical Bill of Fare
In a May 2011 posting on her marvellous blog Homo Gastronomicus, India Mandelkern transcribed some very unusual royal Christmas menus from the time of George II which are recorded in a manuscript in...
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Eat the Entire Creation if you dare ....
...but Beware of the Fatal Effects of GluttonyI have often thought that if the great biblical deluge had taken place in the eighteenth century and Noah had been an Englishman, all those creatures which...
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From Jardiniere to Satyr Pie
A copper jardiniere with a hidden historyNew insights into Britain's extraordinary culinary history sometimes turn up in quite unexpected ways. A few weeks ago a great friend of mine, the sharp eyed...
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Henry VIII's Jely Ypocras?
Some spices commonly used in the preparation of hippocras - starting in the left hand bottom corner and rotating clockwise - grains of paradise (referred to in the recipes quoted here as grains),...
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Eating Egypt
Pharaonical Feasts and a Regency GhostWilliam (Gugliamo) Jarrin (1784-1848). Stipple engraving (1820). I have not posted an article on this blog for ages. A number of demanding TV and museum projects...
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Ivan Day - Some Forthcoming Lectures
I thought that some of you who follow this blog might be interested in some lectures I am giving over the next few months. I am in Hartford, CT later this month presenting a lecture at the Wadsworth...
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Pride and Prejudice - Having a Ball
Some Background on the Ball Supper in the BBC2 DocumentaryAlthough the silver and other tableware here is accurate for the period, this is more of an 'evocation', than a recreation of the Netherfield...
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Some Regency Biscuits
Some Regency period biscuits. In the foreground are millefruit biscuits, sweetmeat biscuits, filbert biscuits and rolled wafers. The round biscuits on the plate in the middle printed with the feathers...
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The Biscuit Break
According to Theodore Garrett in The Encyclopaedia of Practical Cookery (London: 1890s), every cook has their very own  built-in biscuit-break.This is a mini-posting to answer a question put by Elise...
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Fired Puddings from Enlightenment Edinburgh
A once extinct, but delicious eighteenth century Scots dish - 'a common potatoe pudding for firing under meat'.If one nation's cuisine is ridiculed in modern times even more than England's, it is that...
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Macedoine and Other Eccentric Jellies
A Jelly made using a macedoine mould in my collectionPerhaps the most singular culinary expression of the advance of the Industrial Revolution in Victorian Britain was the extraordinary popularity of...
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To Preserve Green Oranges
The young green fruits of Citrus X aurantiumJanuary and early February are the traditional marmalade-making months in Britain. This is because Seville oranges are available in the shops during this...
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Go, bind thou up yon dangling apricocks
Charles Elmé Francatelli's German Tourte of Apricots is a wonderful tart from the early reign of Queen VictoriaThose of you who follow this blog are probably aware that I love food that looks good. And...
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