Hello and welcome to the British Food History Podcast. My name is Dr. Neil Buttery, food historian and chef.
It's time for the now traditional post-bag episode, the fourth one in fact, where I answer your questions, or try to, read out your comments and mull over your queries.
I'm going to be disappearing for a couple of months after this episode, but I will remind you of ways that you can keep up to date with things I'm up to in the meantime.And whilst I might not be putting out any fresh episodes,
I am already collecting conversations and doing research for what will become Season 8.Right, there's lots to get through and I mention a lot of links, reference a lot of old episodes and blog posts.
No need to keep notes though because, as usual, everything will be captured for you in the show notes. People wrote in after listening to the podcast.
A question was sparked off by the Christmas special, which was all about mince pies, where I talked about their origins in the Middle Ages, and that they contained actual meat, unlike today, and were often made from very simple pastries that were not necessarily eaten.
Well, Christopher Ward emailed me to tell me that original mince pies live on in the south of France.This is what he said.
I've just listened to your podcast about mince pies, in particular, their historical forms and contents, particularly the looks like a cotton reel line.So cast your minds back.
I was talking about the pies that are illustrated in Robert May's, The Accomplished Cook, Britain in 1660.Very useful document shows lots of different pies, lots of different shapes.
And some of them were tall and round with a top and a bottom stuck on. which is wider than the actual cylindrical bit, so it looked like a cotton reel.He says, in France, these pies are called Petits Pâtés de Pazanne.
Apologies for that attempt at pronunciation.But they have an absolutely delightful history, he says.They are sold in all of the bakeries in this town, in the south of France.
in Pesanas or Pesana, just to the west of Montpellier and a few dozen kilometers north of the Mediterranean.
Supposedly the recipe was given to the bakers of the town by Clive of India, or his servant, when he paused there for a couple of years en route back to England after governing India.
Clive Vindue was knocking about in the mid 18th century by the way.The town is very proud of their petit pâté and Christopher tells us they are absolutely delicious.
And this is not a surprise because there's always something like this going in France about every kind of regional or niche food.There is an association devoted to keeping up the good name of the petit pâté and guarding its recipe.
He provided me with a few links which will be in the show notes for you if you want to see more about them. He says, having eaten them since the late 90s, I can confirm that they are absolutely delicious.Well, I'm going to have to check them out.
I'm actually going to the South of France in July, but I'm not sure if I'll get to Montpellier though.Anyway, we're adding it to the bucket list of foods to try.Thank you very much, Christopher.
On the subject of Christmassy pies Ian Harker posted on the Facebook discussion page about stand pies.This is what he said.Growing up in the 80s and 90s in Northern England we'd always have a stand pie on Christmas Eve.
It tasted exactly like a pork pie but it was much bigger.The Oxford English Dictionary via the Foods of England website says the name may derive from an old use of stand to mean an open tub or a barrel set on its end. Well, thanks for this Ian.
On my list of things to write up for the blog, it's an ever increasing list, is a post on raised pies and of course therefore pork pies.
Now I'd never heard of a stand pie before and I know Ian and I are from the same part of the country and we're similar ages and yet never heard of it.
I will make sure I include it in my research when I do eventually get round to writing that post about them.So thank you very much Ian.
There was an episode about chocolate with Sam Bilton and in that episode we mentioned the various things used to flavour chocolates and hot chocolate in the past including things like ambergris and musk.
Two rare examples of animal derived spices as we found out in the spices episode with Ian Anderson. Well, I was sent some very interesting information from Leoba Mordenvale on Facebook and this is what she wrote.
I'm just listening to your episode about chocolate.With regard to musk, for some reason, I haven't been able to find out, Australia started putting synthetic musk into sweets in the 1920s and we love it.
Musk sticks and musk lifesavers, whatever they are, are iconic here.They're bright pink and the perfume is very similar to authentic musk.I'm not sure about the taste comparison.
It seems, she says, our musk flavour is a very acquired taste and the reaction of non-Australians seem to be universal disgust. It's one of the two Australian exhibits in Malmo's Disgusting Food Museum.The other one being Vegemite.
She also says Australian confectionery suppliers sell musk flavouring.You may be able to track some down if you're interested.Oh I'm interested.She says you don't need much.Literally a drop will do most uses.
Any more than that and you think you've scarfed down a container of your Nana's talc. Well, I love Vegemite, so maybe I'll like musk as well.I've had a look online and I think it's available in the UK.I also found some ambergris oil.
So, musk and ambergris will be appearing on a podcast or blog, hopefully, later in the year.Thank you very much, Leoba. Next up is the episode about historical cookery with Jay Rifle.We went off on a bit of a tangent about cooking helmeted cocks.
And he mentioned a very important piece of feminist art.The triangular dining table.Now a few people contacted me about it.One of them was Janine Corwin. This is what she said.Jay referenced the dinner party by Judy Chicago.
It's permanently installed at the Brooklyn Museum and I'm rather surprised he didn't have the title An Artist to Credit at hand. Perhaps in a follow-up, you can correct this omission.Well, first of all, I had a look online and it is fantastic.
I've put a link to it in the show notes.Now, Jay didn't include the name because, well, he probably forgot.Neither of us knew we were going to get onto that topic and we just went off on several tangents.
And speaking from experience, one often forgets to mention or recall quite important things like names and dates when under the pressure of an interview. But anyway, thank you for letting us know Janine.
Now on the Brooklyn Museum website it says this about it.I think it's worth reading out.
It says the dinner party comprises a massive ceremonial banquet arranged on a triangular table with a total of 39 play settings, each commemorating an important woman from history.
The settings consist of embroidered runners, gold chalices and utensils,
and china painted porcelain plates with raised and central motifs that are based on vulva and butterfly forms and rendered in styles appropriate to the individual women being honoured.
The names of another 999 women are inscribed in gold on the white tile floor below the triangular table.This permanent installation is enhanced by rotating Her Story gallery exhibitions relating to the 1038 women honoured at the table.
I mean, next that I'm in New York City, I don't go very often, but I will certainly be checking out.When I do go, that's for sure.As I say, there's a link to it in the show notes.It's very impressive and really worth a look.All right.
The episode about Ormskirk gingerbread.A thread got going on the Facebook discussion page regarding regional gingerbreads and their secret recipes.Now, first of all, Ian Harker. Hello again, wrote the following.
I hadn't heard of Ormskirk gingerbread, and I haven't eaten it yet, but Mr Thompson's gingerbread looks similar to Grasmere gingerbread, which I have eaten roughly my own body weight in, and it's from Grasmere in the Lake District.
Now, I thought exactly the same actually.The description of a biscuit that is partly sort of crumbly shortbread in texture, yet treacly and buttery, makes it sound like Ormskirk is very, very similar to Grasmere gingerbread.
Now it's a secret recipe but Ian found one recipe for Grasmere gingerbread in Dorothy Hartley's book Food in England.
Now I've cooked actually two different recipes for Grasmere gingerbread in the past because two appear in English Food by Jane Grigson and they're both very good but they lack the syrupy stroke buttery aspect to it.
So I don't think Jane Grigson's are quite there when it comes to try and get an approximation to the secret recipe.Something to look at between seasons and hopefully I will uncover some stuff.Thank you very much Ian.
Mark Dawson added to the thread to say that the National Trust was selling Grantham gingerbread a couple of years back at Hardwick Hall, which is in Derbyshire. He says it's quite an unusual pale-coloured gingerbread.
There's also an Ashburn gingerbread still going strong in Ashburn at least.But then he wrote back a week or so later with an update about Ashburn gingerbread and that it appears to be no more.
He said, I visited Ashburn last week and Spencer's, who had been making it since the 19th century, closed last year.
I had to make do with a rather sad looking gingerbread man from the original Ashburn gingerbread shop, now run by Birds of Derby, who make many fine things but alas not the traditional Ashburn gingerbread.
However, he did a bit more detective work and he said he's joined the Ashburn Facebook page and have started a thread there and there's plenty of replies.A couple of people plan to start making it again and selling it.
Someone does have a recipe and there's also a tea shop called Betty's in Ashburn that still sells it, making it to the same traditional recipe as the bakery that closed.So all is not lost it seems.I mean thanks for the good work there Mark.
Very encouraging that this regional gingerbread is still going.So I've now got two gingerbreads or even three gingerbreads I need to hunt out now.So I've got Ashburn, Ormskirk and Grasmere gingerbread.
Try and work out the subtle differences between them.We'll see what I come up with. If you've got any information to add, whether it's about regional gingerbreads or any of the things I'm talking about today, please let me know.
Let's just take a little break for a couple of minutes from people's letters because I've got a bit of news with the season finishing and all.Well, first up, I've got some really exciting news.
I can officially announce now that I have two books out this year, both in the autumn.One is called Need to Know?A History of Baking. Published by Icon Books.And the other is The Philosophy of Puddings, which will be published by the British Library.
Very exciting.I will be doing talks both online and in person from September.I haven't quite organized them yet.It's going to be one of the things I do when the podcast goes a bit quiet.
And oh talking of books I will be at the Guild of Food Writers Awards 2024 on June the 12th because I'm up for an award there.
My biography of Elizabeth Raffould is shortlisted for best food book so we'll keep our fingers and toes and eyes crossed for that one.Now how to keep up with news whilst I'm away?Well You can follow me on Facebook.
You can follow me on my blog, British Food History.To hear first of any ticketed events and such like, you could become a £3 monthly subscriber and receive my monthly newsletter, which will also mean you receive other benefits too.
A special extra episode at the end of the season just for you.That's going to be happening in about 10 days time after this episode comes out.It's going to be about British Monarchs, food and their deaths. A jolly subject.
If you're already a subscriber and you miss it don't worry there'll be a reminder about it in the newsletter.
If you want to support the upkeep of the podcast and blogs financially but don't want to give three pounds a month you could instead treat me to a one-off virtual coffee or virtual pint.But of course you don't have to part with your cash to support.
Please leave a review of the podcast wherever you get your podcasts.Follow it and rate it.Rate it with five stars remember. Also remember that there are three events that are coming up in the bag already.
First one's coming up on June the 16th, where I'm going to be taking part in a panel discussion about the culinary and social history of the humble potato as part of the We Invented the Weekend Festival, which is a completely free and ticketless festival taking place in and around Salford Quays, Greater Manchester.
Here is a description of the event from their website.It says, I apologize for mangling any of these names I'm about to read out.
Chefs Mary Ellen McTague and Ngwafu plus food historian Neil Buttery and Dan Monks of Unicorn Grocery come together to salute the potato and its prevalence in dishes from around the world.
We invite attendees to share their personal favorite recipes and tell us the ways the potato features in their weekend.Whether it's a chippy tea on a Friday with a roast on a Sunday.We want to hear it.
It's going to take place on Sunday the 16th of June at 4 o'clock in the afternoon.So information about that in the show notes if you want to find out more.And remember there's two other events.
There's the Ludlow Food Festival Friday the 13th of September.I don't know what time I'm presenting yet but I'll be talking about the history of baking.
I'll also be talking about the same subject at the Warwick Words History Festival Thursday the 3rd of October 4.30pm.
Oh, actually, before I forget, thank you to listeners who came to the British Library event on the 25th of May, when I was talking about tea and revolution in the USA with Professor Nancy Siegel.
I do hope I'm invited back to do something else in the future, because I really enjoyed it.And it was also great to meet Alessandra Pino in real life for the first time.You'll know her from previous episodes of the podcast.
such as the gothic food in literature and the elizabeth raffled episodes.But of course she's also one of my partners in crime along with Sam Bilton in the other podcast Ace for Apple.
And anybody close to or visiting Worcester well why not pop in and visit the Museum of Royal Worcester where I have been working on a variety of events as well as a gallery installation.
The installation is an 18th century dinner table laid out as it would have been with lots of beautiful porcelain and beautiful fake food which I ordered from the fake food workshop which arrived at the museum just a few days ago.
So hopefully the installation will be complete.Very exciting. And Kerry Boyes, the owner of the fake food workshop, who's done a fantastic job recreating the food elements, also did the fake food for the Barbie movie.
Also, if you don't look at the blog, britishfoodahistory.com very often, have a look.I recently posted a rough puff pastry recipe, which is almost foolproof.I've been using it for years, so I hope you find it useful too.
And any recipes dating from before around 1850 that ask for puff pastry are actually asking for what we would call rough puff or flaky pastry today. So if you want to recreate any of those older recipes, this recipe is perfect.
And I'm going to be posting a few more that use the pastry too.I'm sort of halfway through writing up one for Eccles cakes, for example.So season eight, when will I be back?Well, I'm going to go pretty quiet actually for the next couple of months.
I've got to plan the promotion for the upcoming book releases.I've got to get down some ideas for some new books, but don't forget there's A's for Apple, an encyclopedia of food and drink with myself, Sam Bilton, Alessandra Pino.
There's a couple of episodes left of season one to come out.So if you haven't listened before, look for it in your favorite podcast app, give it a follow whilst you're there, give it a rating.It would be very nice. OK, back to Listener's Letters.
This is a bit of a miscellany really.The first one is from James Linden who emailed me about some tidbits he found in Florence White's excellent book, Good Food in England.
He says, I've been following your blog and podcast since season 3 but only just found a good sense to email you.Hopefully this is new and interesting to you.
He says, I stumbled across this entry in Miss Florence White's Wonderful Good Things in England.
She says, Miss Dorothy Hartley, who is a leading authority on medieval England and is intensely interested in folk cookery, sends the following note about gale beer and the name of Miss Hannah Buttery, Thornton-le-Dale Pickering in Yorkshire, who can tell anyone how it's made.
Gale, Miss Hartley writes, is a sweet herb that grows in the moss and was used in caveman's time.They probably made gale beer at St Hilda's Monastery up north.
And he goes on to say, as I think you are too far from Yorkshire and share a surname, you might be interested in a potential familial connection. Well, I've used Florence White's book.I use it all the time.In fact, it's extremely useful document.
I don't actually remember reading or noticing somebody with the surname Buttery in there, but what I can tell you actually is that all of the Butteries in the UK are related.It's quite a rare surname.
The reason being is a Buttery, so it's got nothing to do with Butter, my surname.A Buttery is a room where usually the wine butts were kept. Hence buttery, it's a French word or an old French word.And not many people get named after a room.
People usually get named after the person who looks after the room.And the person who looked after the buttery was the butler.That's where we get the word butler from.
Now there are all sorts of theories that the original buttery family came over with the Normans 1066. Um, so there you go.Um, I should maybe have a look at that.Maybe do talk about butteries and what butteries were as a future podcast episode, maybe.
Anyway, I'm not going to go down a rabbit hole.Sadly, there's no recipe stroke receipt given for the beer in Ms.White's book, but Ms.Hartley has a more detailed entry in her Food in England book.
She writes of an unnamed Scarborough woman whose grandmother made it for religious people and also provides a recipe.And yes, indeed she does.
And by the way, Gale goes under the name of Bog Myrtle sometimes, which I mean, it's not a commonly used herb at all anymore, but that's the name that I'd heard of.I'd not heard of Gale before, or at least I hadn't clocked it before.
And it's a bitter herb used to flavour beer and ale. There was a whole range of bitter herbs used in this way but of course we only really use one now and that is of course hops.
If you want to hear a little bit more about this listen to the Recreating 16th Century Beer episode with Susan Flavin and Mark Meltonville.Now he also mentioned
in Florence White's book, that there's a curious description for a chine of mutton roasted.Now, I did an episode about the traditional food of Lincolnshire with Rachel Green.
And one of the things we talked about was Lincolnshire chine, which is a cut of pork with big slashes in, stuffed with, amongst other things, parsley.And I wrote a recipe up on the Neil Cook's Grigson blog.But anyway, he says a chine of mutton
was stuffed similarly to the way a chine of bacon is stuffed to this day in Lincolnshire.
In this case, lemon peel or orange peel chopped and a clove or two or tops of rosemary plus thyme, sage, winter savoury, much underused herb in my opinion, or sweet marjoram,
Or chopped and blended, roasted and basted with butter, served with the following.And this is the reason why it's actually writing in.This is what I'm getting to.You'd serve this with a sauce made of the following.
The mutton gravy, seasoned with nutmeg and boiled up with a little claret and the juice of an orange.Before dishing it up, rub the dish lightly with a cut clove of garlic. Now this is what he says.A quick thought.Having just mentioned it.
Gravy might make for an interesting blog stroke podcast topic.If you're open to suggestions he says.Oh I'm open to suggestions.And the reason is that he thinks it seems to have a different meaning in every old recipe book.From meat juices.
To a base for sauces.To sauces with meat juices in it.To today's ubiquitous Sunday Rose staple. Yes, I mean, I must say it's all very confusing.Gravy means different things to different people, both now and in the past.Yeah.
And from its most simple form is just the juices that come out of the animal when it's roasting.But yes, also a sauce and many, many different versions of it.Not just in the UK, of course, but over in North America, for example.
I am definitely going to be visiting this on either the podcast or the blog. is actually something I've had in the back of my mind for quite a while.So I'm going to move it up the list, move it up the to-do list.But thank you very much, James.
Chantelle Dollymore messaged me via Facebook.She asks, are you potentially looking for more stories for your British food podcast?I always am.Thank you for asking, Chantelle.She says, I would love if you felt that the 1699 commonplace book at Townend
a historic Larkland farmhouse owned by 12 generations might be of interest.And it's a farming family that lived there for several centuries.She left a link to the National Trust website.And I mean, it looks like a fantastic place.
I'm really going to try my best in the next 12 months to really get out there and visit various stately homes, other historically important buildings, in fact.So it's definitely going on a list for me to check it out.But anyway,
I had a little look online and I found a transcript of the handwritten commonplace book.And it is very interesting actually.Lots of recipes for things that you might expect from around the year 1700.Making ale, roasting fish, pigeon pie, syllabubs.
But of course this isn't a cookbook, this is a household book.And there's other household information such as how to make quills.
a whole range of different medicines, bloodletting and there's also magic in there including how to use the abracadabra spell in an amulet.
So a very important bit of social history there so I'm definitely going to have a closer look at this Chantelle. What will happen, I'm not quite sure, but leave it with me.So thank you very much for sending me that.
The great thing about handwritten manuscripts is that they're the recipes that the writer used, or at least thought that they might use, which isn't always the case in cookery books.
I really love the variety of tasks there, because remember the lady of the house and her housekeeper were in charge of more than just the food.I've left the link to the document for you to download and look at if you like.
I need to look at it a bit more closely I think and there's certainly something that I can do but I need to assimilate it properly.
Perhaps some of the pudding recipes would be a good place to start considering the pudding books coming out later on this year.Cheers Chantelle!Ariana Kennedy messaged me on Instagram.
And she says, Hi Neil, I just wanted to pop a message to say thank you.I'm doing some research on 18th century culture and I've just finished listening to the episode on tavern cookery, which has just given me a good flavour of this.
Cast your minds back, the guest for that episode was Mark Meltonville.She said, I wondered if it was possible to do an episode in 18th century rural dining, as there's very little information about that outside of London.
And then she says, I'll have to listen to some of your mince pie episode.Nice.Now I spoke to Ivan Day about 18th century dining by posh folk who were usually in the countryside, but not working class folk.
And it's, I mean, this is something that's hard to pin down.It was a great time of change for the diets of working people in the country, whether they were moving into towns and cities or if they were remaining in the countryside.
The variety of foods really began to drop, but it was much more obvious in the towns and cities compared to the countryside.And the reason for that is we move more to a cash economy.
Farmers don't pay rent necessarily in their produce, but instead cash.So it's all about money, not produce and farmers really specializing. And a lot of this information isn't necessarily written down.
And of course there are different foods associated with different regions.Oats and mutton for example in Scotland and the north of England.There's dependence on griddles and bake stones rather than bread ovens.
These are all things we've sort of mentioned at time to time on the podcast and that I've written in the blog.So I'm going to do some rooting around.
The best places to check out about this kind of information, I think anyway, Ariana, are two books I've already mentioned today.And that's Good Things in England by Florence White. and Food in England by Dorothy Hartley.
But also a third book also by Dorothy Hartley called Lost Country Life, which I think you might find useful, especially about pigs and black puddings.
I used both of Dorothy Hartley's books in the research for my book on puddings for the British Library. I think you might find some stuff there but I'm going to have a little look too and see what I can uncover.
If any listeners have any knowledge to help me out please contact me and let me know.Email neil at britishfoodhistory.com or leave a comment beneath the post or send me a DM on social media.
On Twitter and Blue Sky I'm at neilbuttery and Instagram and threads I'm drneilbuttery or come and find the British Food History discussion page on Facebook which is at facebook.com forward slash groups forward slash British Food History
Well, it's time to go.Thank you very much for all of your messages and of course for listening and following and downloading.You know how much I appreciate it.
Don't forget, before I'm back, to let folk know about the podcast, spreading the good word, spam them if you have to. Thank you so much for everyone who's donated financially to the running of the podcast.
It does mean that the seasons are slowly getting longer as I can allow myself more time to spend on the podcast and the blog.Keep your correspondence coming.
You don't have to wait for new episodes to come out to send me interesting stuff that might appear in future postbag editions. And a huge thank you too to this season's guests for coming on, sparing the time on their busy schedules.And what a list!
Thomas Nadinas, Joanna Crosby, Sam Bilton, Ian Anderson, Danielle Cebulski, Ivan Day, Penn Vogler, Joanna Hambly, Aaron Allen, Ed Bethune, Eleanor Barnett, Anushka Lewis and Jay Rifle.All of you are welcome back, anytime.
So you'll be hearing again from me soon.Don't forget to keep checking the website from time to time.Right, off I go, until we meet again once more.Cheerio.
