English provincial cooking

by Elisabeth Ayrton

Regional English Cooking selected from family records old manuscripts & cook books

Genres: Cookbooks

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Elizabeth Evelyn Walshe Balchin Ayrton, daughter of the novelist Douglas Walshe and the writer Phyllis Sydney. She married Nigel Balchin and Michael Ayrton.

Reviews

[Redsteve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite being a fairly slim volume, this book is actually quite good, both from a cooking and historical perspectives. To be honest, I assumed that this was going to be a basic book of English cooking with a selection of common recipes and pretty photographs - I was entirely wrong. The author covers regional specialties (some highly unusual), with their origins (usually Medieval to 19th Century - but in a few cases, back to Roman Britain). The author starts each chapter with a discussion of the specific region of England: East Anglia, The North, Midlands, West Country, South and Southeast, Home Counties, and London. These go into a fair amount of detail on the general origins of cooking traditions by region, based on terrain/agriculture, trade, culture, etc. This is often addressed more specifically in individual recipes. There are also interesting digressions about such topics as primitive cooking and shipboard foods (including treatments for scurvy - beyond the usual lime jiuce) during the age of sail. Ayrton frequently includes the first written mention of a dish with the recipes. 4 stars.