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 Mr ..read more

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 shap ..read more

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. Apar ..read more

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 it ..read more

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. P ..read more

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 th ..read more

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. If you are not a subscriber, you can become one on the Support the Blogs and Podcast tab of the blog, where you will access all of my Easter eggs, premium blog content and receive my weekly newsletter AND help support the running o ..read more

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 ..read more

As promised on the ‘School Meals Service with Heather Ellis’ episode of the podcast, I have written a recipe for a stone-cold school dinners classic for my monthly subscribers. I went for the pink-sponge and custard because quite a few people have mentioned this as a favourite on social media, so it was the obvious choice. Heather Ellis said on Twitter that there were several different colours of these sponges: I also remember brown (though I don’t think it was chocolatey, just coloured brown). Others remembered white, and I wondered if yellow was perhaps a colour? Let me know your thoughts ..read more

This post complements the episode of The British Food History Podcast called ‘The School Meals Service with Heather Ellis’: Speaking with Heather Ellis on the podcast about the School Meals Service and school dinners really fired off some food memories, good and bad. If it has in you too, please let the School Meals Project know about them – and let me know about them too – there’s a postbag episode of the podcast coming in just two or three weeks’ time. Three stuck in my mind: sago or tapioca pudding, pink sponge and custard, and Spam fritters. Of those, my favourite is sago/tapioca puddin ..read more