Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking

About this book

A fascinating history of how Britain learned to cook from prehistory to the modern age. Written with a storytellers flair and packed with astonishing facts Taste is a sumptuous social history of Britain told through the development of its cooking. It encompasses royal feasts and street food the skinning of eels and the making of strawberry jelly mixing tales of culinary stars with those of the invisible hordes cooking in kitchens across the land. Beginning before Roman times the book journeys through the ingredients equipment kitchens feasts fads and famines of the British; it covers the piquancy of Norman cuisine the influx of undreamed-of spices and new foods from the East and the New World the Tudor pumpkin pie that journeyed with the founding fathers to become Americas national dish the austerity of rationing during World War II and the birth of convenience foods and take-away right up to the age of Nigella Lawson Heston Blumenthal and Jamie Oliver. The first trade book to tell the story of British cookingwhich is of course the history that led up to American colonial cooking as wellTaste shows that kitchens are not only places of steam oil and sweat but of politics invention cultural exchange commerce conflict and play.