The British Cookbook: authentic home cooking recipes from England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland

Product Information

This last takes the form of complete transcriptions (and some facsimiles) of all the title pages of works referred to by Dr Lehmann. Try delicious recipes for potted crab, slow-roasted pork belly, steamed ginger pudding and damson ice cream. Lehmann documents the gradual postponement of the dinner hour and the necessity therefore of a midday snack. Plus, with her 'Cook's Know-How' sections and over 300 variations, techniques and tips - this book can keep you cooking creatively for years.

Though she concentrates on the cookery books of the era, she also give us fabulous information (which is hard to find in books or on the net) on the authors of these books and their readership, detailing the types of person – from grand mistress to servants – who was intended to be the reader of the books. Spread strawberry (raspberry, mixed berry) jam and whipped cream between the layers and dust the top with powdered sugar. Lehmann’s great skill is to give full weight to the uniqueness of each meal, and yet still be able to present an overall picture of 18th-century eating that is neither bitty nor over-simplified. The dishes appear alongside stunning food images and beautiful landscapes of the countryside of the UK by photographer Sam Harris. In Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen, Elizabeth David even fell into the trap by commending ‘Farley’s’ clarity of voice and style.She starts by tracing the impact of printed cookbooks on Tudor cooking (French influence as early as the 1500s was an interesting surprise), the consequent rise of court cookery and the beginning of what amounts to modernization toward the end of the sixteenth century (there is a helpful discussion of the different audiences of male and female authors even this early, and of Robert May and Gervase Markham) before addressing the 1700s in detail. Memorable Meals Made Easy is all about minimising the time you spend in the kitchen so you can maximise the time spent with guests. As the 18th century progressed, bourgeois tastes, buoyed by an influx of cash and confidence, began to assert themselves not only as delicious but wholesome too.

To mitigate this issue for those who disagree, I suggest the publisher makes a Kindle version of the book available. Late meals were a sign of status, and lesser visitors could be kept waiting past their normal mealtime so as to reinforce the host’s superiority.

Kedgeree is a lovely breakfast/brunch dish (make it in the US with hot smoked salmon) and Onion Bahjias (Bajhis) are to die for. Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH).