Synopses & Reviews
A fascinating history of how Britain learned to cook, from prehistory to the modern age.
Written with a storyteller's 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 America's 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 cooking--which is, of course, the history that led up to American colonial cooking as well--Taste shows that kitchens are not only places of steam, oil, and sweat, but of politics, invention, cultural exchange, commerce, conflict, and play.
Review
“[A]n invaluable work of social history and one of the more fascinating kitchen-related books to cross the Atlantic since the Oxford Companion to Food...one interesting fact or minihistory after another. [Colquhoun's] supple BBC-Four-meets-Julia-Child voice is just one of the book's pleasures...This is a triumph to savor.” —Publishers Weekly (starred)
“Refreshingly free of jokes about British cooking, her text uses cookery through the ages to explain everything from the British Isles waves of invaders and immigrants to class conflict and consciousness, patriotism and terror during World War II rationing…[a] fascinating history of an empire…Colquhoun can reach passionate heights...A thoughtful and detailed book to be savored—but not on an empty stomach.” —Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
From the Iron Age to the Industrial Revolution, the Romans to the Regency, few things have mirrored society or been affected by its upheavals as much as the food we eat and the way we prepare it. In this involving history of the British people, Kate Colquhoun celebrates every aspect of our cuisine from Anglo-Saxon feasts and Tudor banquets, through the skinning of eels and the invention of ice cream, to Dickensian dinner-party excess and the growth of frozen food. Taste tells a story as rich and diverse as a five-course dinner.
About the Author
Kate Colquhoun is the author of A Thing in Disguise: The Visionary Life of Joseph Paxton (2003). It was shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize 2004 and longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2003. She reviews regularly for the Daily Telegraph and has written for The Times, the Financial Times, BBC History Magazine, Saga Magazine, The (RHS) Garden and Country Life Magazine.