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Borough Market: Edible Histories: Epic tales of everyday ingredients
One of The Times Books of the Year 2020Shortlisted for The Fortnum & Mason Food & Drink Awards 2021, Debut Food Book_____________'Fascinating and entertaining - a pleasure to read.' Claudia RodenHave you ever stopped to wonder how our most beloved foods came to be the way they are now? As a nation of food-lovers we have been munching on fruit and veg, drinking tea and coffee and adorning our dishes with oils and spices for generations, but how did this happen? What is the history of our favourite foodstuffs?In this series of enlightening and highly entertaining essays, award-winning food writer Mark Riddaway travels back through the centuries to tell the fascinating, surprising and often downright bizarre stories of some of the everyday ingredients found at London's Borough Market.Discover how the strawberries we eat today had their roots in a clandestine trip to South America by a French spy whose surname happened to be Strawberry, why three-quarters of Britain's late-18th-century intake of tea was sold on the black market, and what Sigmund Freud found so fascinating about eel genitalia.From the humble apples and onions that we've grown on these shores for centuries, to more exotic ingredients like cinnamon and bananas that travel from across the world to finesse our food, Borough Edible Histories offers a chance to digest the charming stories behind every last morsel.
285 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 12, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 29, 2024
Overall the book was good and I enjoyed it for the most part. The chapters are fairly short and give a unique overview of the ingredient. Not necessarily a great one though for some ingredients. Some of the choices for ingredients were also questionable. And as a reader that's not from England, I didn't care much for every chapter tieing it back to England in some way. Unless England happens to be the single most important country in the history of food.
It certainly sparkled my interest into reading more about certain types of foods.
The book's introduction already showed how funny this book was going to be with smart British humor. And it's thankfully equally as cohesive with the book's title.
The first chapter was about apples. My main takeaway from that chapter was it's sheer variety all across the world. Even the ancient world. Variety of flavors and sizes, shapes and uses. Especially in the UK with a rich history of it until the 20th century. Until the homogeneous varieties around the world out competed them in the market and super market unfortunately.
The next chapter was about the tomato, originating as a wild fruit in Chile and then domesticated by farmers in the andies. Our cherry tomato is a closer cousin between the wild og and the current plump tomato variety. Accounts of tenogticlan market tell of the vast variety again of the tomato. Of course it's the Spanish that eventually just generalized the varieties into a single word. I'm worried though it was not originally enjoyed as food. More medicinal. It was of course the southern Italians that first took advantage of this new treasure as they may have been less squeamish and influenced by the Spanish that brought it back. In the 17 hundreds, the tomato started to be used further north in northern Italy and France but Britain remained stubborn to many fruits and veg. In the 18 hundreds was when preserved tomatoes in cans were made and then later brought back to America for ketchup to be finally invented. The ultimate preserved version of the once native fruit of the south Americans. The tomato is now a year round staple in almost every form.
The next chapter was about Olive oil which is deeply intertwined in the politics, economy and history of the middle East thousands of years ago. Later it was the greeks that brought it to Europe and to Rome. Olive oil was not just used for food but a rather large array of uses like oils lubricants and skin remedies. The Romans took the domestication of olive oil to a different level, separating the olives to eat and for oil and a big emphasis on the production to get better quality. For hundreds of years, Olive oil was manufactured in this same way until the modern 20th century where science and technology allowed for more efficient and larger productions, possibly at the cost of quality. A worse selection of olives and chemicals and heating to prevent bad tastes has made it that there is a quality standard of "extra virgin" Olive oil. The standard is seemingly strict but in truth, no testing allows for the rules to be bent for those that pay. For us consumers, best option is to buy as close to the source as possible.
Next chapter was about coffee but I'm all "coffeed" out after the coffee book by Michael Pollan.
The next one was about vinegar. Very funny as he describes it as having historically the reputation of a party pooper. The fermented liquid goes hand in hand with the local alcohol like beer or wine across the world. On top of that, it has some medical benefits along and features in a variety of famous stories throughout ancient history, including the death of Jesus. The production combo eventually was becoming more rare as more refined vinegar were being made. The ultimate version of that, from Modenna, is Balsamic vinegar ("healing vinegar") from grape must and agreed for 12 years.
Herring is the next chapter. An economically, politically and historically important food equal to that of other foods throughout this book already. Rightfully so, it is very nutritious and was very abundant. Their main defensive mechanism against predators is having thousands of offspring. Their oiliness doesn't help fresh getting but salted and fermented getting, known as White Herring, can last for months. Throughout history they have been used and eaten by all sorts of countries and armies and their trade has been monopolized several times by different people too. The vanishing of the herring has throughout history not been attributed to over fishing but Rather moral reasons, mostly with women to blame. Eventually the great Britain would own the monopoly despite having many years with a terrible infrastructure and quality of the white Herring. Their unprecedented peak would be so large that it would eventually cause a massive shortage of herring. One that Europe may never recover fully. The ban on fishing them would allow the fish to recover their numbers but would kill European fishing, especially in Britain.
The spice cinnamon was the next chapter. It talks about the legends of birds and snakes that guarded it, that were invented so that cinnamon could be charged for more expensive prices by arabs. But the bark from which cinnamon is from comes from the further in Asia. The sweet variant from Sri Lana and India, the darker and more robust from Indonesia and the more pungent from China and Vietnam. It's used in a number of savory dishes but not desserts. It's hotness was often used against colds in Europe. The cinnamon trade was so sought after by the Europeans that there is actually quite a lengthy history of them miserably searching for it in the Americas. Both by Columbus and the Spanish. The Portuguese on the other hand finally got to Sri Lanka first. Eventually the Dutch usurped then and domesticated cinnamon and then finally the English once they conquered south Asia region. Eventually cinnamon was brought to sweet dishes.
The banana is the unexpected next ingredient and my favorite chapter so far. The banana is one of the most popular and most cultivated fruits today but it's origins lie in Indonesia, Southern China and India. The banana "tree" is a bizarre plant that is lumped into the tree department despite having very few tree resembling qualities. Desire it obviously being a fruit, the modern banana has no seeds, only the dark remnants of it's ancestors. The first encounter between Europeans and bananas was with Alexander the great in India. Later the arabs brought the banana to Spain during their invasions. Long after the arabs had left Spain, the Spanish would then set off on their Atlantic conquest with Portugal. Both would annihilate many West African coasts and plant sugar plantations there. They would then introduce bananas to feed the hard working slaves in their plantations. Africa countries would eventually become the biggest producers of bananas. They would then be taken to the Americas in the Caribbean for sugar plantations too. A dark combo of agriculture. It would then be sold to the UK, where it would be a funnel for the rest of Europe and later yet be sold to America. The markets for both countries had not been established yet so it's interesting to know how such a popular fruit nowadays took such few people to popularize to such proportions. In America it was a merchant that managed to make a profit by selling the Jamaican bananas in Boston. The Boston fruit company was established as they were transporting better fruit more successfully with better refrigeration. Bananas took off in the US, to the point where the available land in Jamaica wasn't enough for the plantations. Boston fruit then merged with another company to form United fruit, and together they would dominate the fruit market in the Americas, one by one. With questionable ethics and morals. They got so powerful, that they held influence over the politics of the central American countries and here, they had no limit to how far they would go to such vulnerable countries. This is where the term "banana Republic" comes from. Banana plantations in Panama had caught a disease that destroyed the root of the trees. The variant most used in the US at the time, big Michelle, was particularly susceptible but the cavindish variant from China wasn't. It then became the most popular type of banana. Today the cavindish is becoming increasingly susceptible to Panama disease and other funguses. There are also many court cases against plantation owners and companies in regards to slavery, child labor, bribery, assassinations and even dangerous pesticides. The future of the banana will hopefully not be as dark.
Pasta, the next chapter. The story of Marco Polo bringing it back from the orient, or his mysterious companion Spaghetti is utter Bullshit. Pasta inextricably associated with Italy, existed there long before Marco Polo even left. But the Cornell of Truth is that it already existed in China far longer. Known as Bing, wheat noodles. There are several more likely influences around the Mediterranean, like the greens, the Jews and the arabs, that would one day evolve into the more familiar Italian pasta. The original one probably came from Sicily, made of semolina flour. Traders eventually took it to Spain where it would become more popular but still imported from Italy. A sign of the quality of wheat and the increasingly refined ways of making it, like the addition of eggs. Naples and Geneva even created guilds for the production of pasta which established them as the centers of dried pasta exports. As the technology improved to make pasta, so did the popularity of it in Italy itself becoming a household staple. Many cookbooks imply a lengthy regional history of pasta but the book shows that rather classic pasta can be more recent. Like the use of tomatoes in pasta in Naples, possibly influenced by the French. As pasta became ever so refined and specific in Italy, it became ever looser around the rest of Europe and a bastard version of the original influences. A prime example is spaghetti Bolognese, being influenced by the English, having nothing to do with Bologna. The construction of large industrial parts machines was the end of pasta guilds and made it cheaper too, which was the end of many small businesses. It's universality cemented pasta as a regional and national pride. I love the final line: "to most Italians, alongside family, God and football, pasta outstrips pretty much everything else."
The next chapter is about the animal and food, the turkey. I've already read quite comprehensive essays about the immorality of domestic turkeys but the chapter talked at first about the origins of the turkey in people's food in Central America and Mexico and then in the 1500s introduced to Europe. The word turkey probably just comes from the use of the word, Turkish, for anything foreign that was glamorous. But there were a number of different versions of naming the animal in different languages. The turkey would mainly replace the peacock on European dishes. Once they discovered how much larger and more populous the North American Turkey was, they almost killed it to extinction. The domesticated turkey is one of America's most popular meats, especially on Thanksgiving. A rather shorter tradition than one might hope for. The turkey is a rather difficult animal to farm though so it remained a luxury until Gene selection was introduced in its domestication and we ended up with the cheap and massive monstrosity, the wide breasted white breed.
The next chapter was about tea. Tea has a really long and complex history between China and England. It's large enough for many other books to tell it. I've skipped this.
Next up were strawberries. Not the most exciting of histories but it did make me change my perspective about how the food we eat come to exist or become popular. Strawberries although being the most popular berry now, they weren't always that way. Especially with the nobility. It's lowly status (possibly because of its wildness and it's low hanging fruit) prevented it from becoming a popular fruit. It wasn't the easiest to grow either because it needs both a female and a male plant, which doesn't grow fruit. It was years later that a French spy in South America brought back a different variant of strawberries to Europe. Later yet, young English botanists managed to create a hybrid of two different strawberries from different parts of the world to create the modern day strawberry. The chapter concluded that good would have tough competition against the British botanists to create the greatest berry ever.
Alliums were the next chapter. I didn't even know what they were actually. They are the group of plants in which onions, garlic, leek, chives, shallots and others. They have been past of recipes since the very oldest records of recipes themselves both because they are easy to cultivate, their good taste in dishes and their believed health benefits. They do have the notorious reputation of bad breath though.
The last two chapters were eel and ice cream and I thought they were a rather odd choice. How did eel make the list and how is ice cream going to have a lengthy and important history that needs preservation?
It certainly sparkled my interest into reading more about certain types of foods.
The book's introduction already showed how funny this book was going to be with smart British humor. And it's thankfully equally as cohesive with the book's title.
The first chapter was about apples. My main takeaway from that chapter was it's sheer variety all across the world. Even the ancient world. Variety of flavors and sizes, shapes and uses. Especially in the UK with a rich history of it until the 20th century. Until the homogeneous varieties around the world out competed them in the market and super market unfortunately.
The next chapter was about the tomato, originating as a wild fruit in Chile and then domesticated by farmers in the andies. Our cherry tomato is a closer cousin between the wild og and the current plump tomato variety. Accounts of tenogticlan market tell of the vast variety again of the tomato. Of course it's the Spanish that eventually just generalized the varieties into a single word. I'm worried though it was not originally enjoyed as food. More medicinal. It was of course the southern Italians that first took advantage of this new treasure as they may have been less squeamish and influenced by the Spanish that brought it back. In the 17 hundreds, the tomato started to be used further north in northern Italy and France but Britain remained stubborn to many fruits and veg. In the 18 hundreds was when preserved tomatoes in cans were made and then later brought back to America for ketchup to be finally invented. The ultimate preserved version of the once native fruit of the south Americans. The tomato is now a year round staple in almost every form.
The next chapter was about Olive oil which is deeply intertwined in the politics, economy and history of the middle East thousands of years ago. Later it was the greeks that brought it to Europe and to Rome. Olive oil was not just used for food but a rather large array of uses like oils lubricants and skin remedies. The Romans took the domestication of olive oil to a different level, separating the olives to eat and for oil and a big emphasis on the production to get better quality. For hundreds of years, Olive oil was manufactured in this same way until the modern 20th century where science and technology allowed for more efficient and larger productions, possibly at the cost of quality. A worse selection of olives and chemicals and heating to prevent bad tastes has made it that there is a quality standard of "extra virgin" Olive oil. The standard is seemingly strict but in truth, no testing allows for the rules to be bent for those that pay. For us consumers, best option is to buy as close to the source as possible.
Next chapter was about coffee but I'm all "coffeed" out after the coffee book by Michael Pollan.
The next one was about vinegar. Very funny as he describes it as having historically the reputation of a party pooper. The fermented liquid goes hand in hand with the local alcohol like beer or wine across the world. On top of that, it has some medical benefits along and features in a variety of famous stories throughout ancient history, including the death of Jesus. The production combo eventually was becoming more rare as more refined vinegar were being made. The ultimate version of that, from Modenna, is Balsamic vinegar ("healing vinegar") from grape must and agreed for 12 years.
Herring is the next chapter. An economically, politically and historically important food equal to that of other foods throughout this book already. Rightfully so, it is very nutritious and was very abundant. Their main defensive mechanism against predators is having thousands of offspring. Their oiliness doesn't help fresh getting but salted and fermented getting, known as White Herring, can last for months. Throughout history they have been used and eaten by all sorts of countries and armies and their trade has been monopolized several times by different people too. The vanishing of the herring has throughout history not been attributed to over fishing but Rather moral reasons, mostly with women to blame. Eventually the great Britain would own the monopoly despite having many years with a terrible infrastructure and quality of the white Herring. Their unprecedented peak would be so large that it would eventually cause a massive shortage of herring. One that Europe may never recover fully. The ban on fishing them would allow the fish to recover their numbers but would kill European fishing, especially in Britain.
The spice cinnamon was the next chapter. It talks about the legends of birds and snakes that guarded it, that were invented so that cinnamon could be charged for more expensive prices by arabs. But the bark from which cinnamon is from comes from the further in Asia. The sweet variant from Sri Lana and India, the darker and more robust from Indonesia and the more pungent from China and Vietnam. It's used in a number of savory dishes but not desserts. It's hotness was often used against colds in Europe. The cinnamon trade was so sought after by the Europeans that there is actually quite a lengthy history of them miserably searching for it in the Americas. Both by Columbus and the Spanish. The Portuguese on the other hand finally got to Sri Lanka first. Eventually the Dutch usurped then and domesticated cinnamon and then finally the English once they conquered south Asia region. Eventually cinnamon was brought to sweet dishes.
The banana is the unexpected next ingredient and my favorite chapter so far. The banana is one of the most popular and most cultivated fruits today but it's origins lie in Indonesia, Southern China and India. The banana "tree" is a bizarre plant that is lumped into the tree department despite having very few tree resembling qualities. Desire it obviously being a fruit, the modern banana has no seeds, only the dark remnants of it's ancestors. The first encounter between Europeans and bananas was with Alexander the great in India. Later the arabs brought the banana to Spain during their invasions. Long after the arabs had left Spain, the Spanish would then set off on their Atlantic conquest with Portugal. Both would annihilate many West African coasts and plant sugar plantations there. They would then introduce bananas to feed the hard working slaves in their plantations. Africa countries would eventually become the biggest producers of bananas. They would then be taken to the Americas in the Caribbean for sugar plantations too. A dark combo of agriculture. It would then be sold to the UK, where it would be a funnel for the rest of Europe and later yet be sold to America. The markets for both countries had not been established yet so it's interesting to know how such a popular fruit nowadays took such few people to popularize to such proportions. In America it was a merchant that managed to make a profit by selling the Jamaican bananas in Boston. The Boston fruit company was established as they were transporting better fruit more successfully with better refrigeration. Bananas took off in the US, to the point where the available land in Jamaica wasn't enough for the plantations. Boston fruit then merged with another company to form United fruit, and together they would dominate the fruit market in the Americas, one by one. With questionable ethics and morals. They got so powerful, that they held influence over the politics of the central American countries and here, they had no limit to how far they would go to such vulnerable countries. This is where the term "banana Republic" comes from. Banana plantations in Panama had caught a disease that destroyed the root of the trees. The variant most used in the US at the time, big Michelle, was particularly susceptible but the cavindish variant from China wasn't. It then became the most popular type of banana. Today the cavindish is becoming increasingly susceptible to Panama disease and other funguses. There are also many court cases against plantation owners and companies in regards to slavery, child labor, bribery, assassinations and even dangerous pesticides. The future of the banana will hopefully not be as dark.
Pasta, the next chapter. The story of Marco Polo bringing it back from the orient, or his mysterious companion Spaghetti is utter Bullshit. Pasta inextricably associated with Italy, existed there long before Marco Polo even left. But the Cornell of Truth is that it already existed in China far longer. Known as Bing, wheat noodles. There are several more likely influences around the Mediterranean, like the greens, the Jews and the arabs, that would one day evolve into the more familiar Italian pasta. The original one probably came from Sicily, made of semolina flour. Traders eventually took it to Spain where it would become more popular but still imported from Italy. A sign of the quality of wheat and the increasingly refined ways of making it, like the addition of eggs. Naples and Geneva even created guilds for the production of pasta which established them as the centers of dried pasta exports. As the technology improved to make pasta, so did the popularity of it in Italy itself becoming a household staple. Many cookbooks imply a lengthy regional history of pasta but the book shows that rather classic pasta can be more recent. Like the use of tomatoes in pasta in Naples, possibly influenced by the French. As pasta became ever so refined and specific in Italy, it became ever looser around the rest of Europe and a bastard version of the original influences. A prime example is spaghetti Bolognese, being influenced by the English, having nothing to do with Bologna. The construction of large industrial parts machines was the end of pasta guilds and made it cheaper too, which was the end of many small businesses. It's universality cemented pasta as a regional and national pride. I love the final line: "to most Italians, alongside family, God and football, pasta outstrips pretty much everything else."
The next chapter is about the animal and food, the turkey. I've already read quite comprehensive essays about the immorality of domestic turkeys but the chapter talked at first about the origins of the turkey in people's food in Central America and Mexico and then in the 1500s introduced to Europe. The word turkey probably just comes from the use of the word, Turkish, for anything foreign that was glamorous. But there were a number of different versions of naming the animal in different languages. The turkey would mainly replace the peacock on European dishes. Once they discovered how much larger and more populous the North American Turkey was, they almost killed it to extinction. The domesticated turkey is one of America's most popular meats, especially on Thanksgiving. A rather shorter tradition than one might hope for. The turkey is a rather difficult animal to farm though so it remained a luxury until Gene selection was introduced in its domestication and we ended up with the cheap and massive monstrosity, the wide breasted white breed.
The next chapter was about tea. Tea has a really long and complex history between China and England. It's large enough for many other books to tell it. I've skipped this.
Next up were strawberries. Not the most exciting of histories but it did make me change my perspective about how the food we eat come to exist or become popular. Strawberries although being the most popular berry now, they weren't always that way. Especially with the nobility. It's lowly status (possibly because of its wildness and it's low hanging fruit) prevented it from becoming a popular fruit. It wasn't the easiest to grow either because it needs both a female and a male plant, which doesn't grow fruit. It was years later that a French spy in South America brought back a different variant of strawberries to Europe. Later yet, young English botanists managed to create a hybrid of two different strawberries from different parts of the world to create the modern day strawberry. The chapter concluded that good would have tough competition against the British botanists to create the greatest berry ever.
Alliums were the next chapter. I didn't even know what they were actually. They are the group of plants in which onions, garlic, leek, chives, shallots and others. They have been past of recipes since the very oldest records of recipes themselves both because they are easy to cultivate, their good taste in dishes and their believed health benefits. They do have the notorious reputation of bad breath though.
The last two chapters were eel and ice cream and I thought they were a rather odd choice. How did eel make the list and how is ice cream going to have a lengthy and important history that needs preservation?
October 24, 2021
This book describes the history of a selection of foodstuffs. The first chapter covers the journey that the first domesticated apple trees made along the silk road from central Asia to Europe, eventually being bought to Britain by the Romans. (What did the Romans ever do for us?!) When the Romans left, apple cultivation became the preserve of the monasteries, while other people would forage for edible fruit growing wild in the forests from accidental cross-breeding with the native wild crab apple.
After that, we move on to tomatoes (originally called “love apples”), olive oil (once playing much the same role as petroleum does today in terms of providing wealth to those countries rich in it and heating, lighting and sustenance to everyone), coffee, vinegar, herring (who would have thought that the reformation would cause the collapse of the fishing industry in England?), cinnamon, bananas, pasta and turkey.
There are lots of little verbal gems along the way. I’ve pasted a few examples below.
“After England became a Protestant country and could happily gorge on butter every day of the week…”
“Just don’t ask them about the chastity of the pickers. That hypothesis remains unproven.” (It was once thought that the purest olive oil could only be produced by workers who were themselves pure.)
“As dhikrs often took place in the dead of night, when a trance-like state can easily tip into a deep, unenlightening sleep, the discovery of coffee proved revelatory.” (On the role of Sufi Islam in Yemen in introducing coffee-drinking to the Arabian Peninsula and hence to the world.)
The author doesn’t pull his punches when it comes to describing the role that colonialism, racism and exploitation of both people and the planet have played in the production of many of our favourite foodstuffs. The book is worth a read for that aspect alone.
After that, we move on to tomatoes (originally called “love apples”), olive oil (once playing much the same role as petroleum does today in terms of providing wealth to those countries rich in it and heating, lighting and sustenance to everyone), coffee, vinegar, herring (who would have thought that the reformation would cause the collapse of the fishing industry in England?), cinnamon, bananas, pasta and turkey.
There are lots of little verbal gems along the way. I’ve pasted a few examples below.
“After England became a Protestant country and could happily gorge on butter every day of the week…”
“Just don’t ask them about the chastity of the pickers. That hypothesis remains unproven.” (It was once thought that the purest olive oil could only be produced by workers who were themselves pure.)
“As dhikrs often took place in the dead of night, when a trance-like state can easily tip into a deep, unenlightening sleep, the discovery of coffee proved revelatory.” (On the role of Sufi Islam in Yemen in introducing coffee-drinking to the Arabian Peninsula and hence to the world.)
The author doesn’t pull his punches when it comes to describing the role that colonialism, racism and exploitation of both people and the planet have played in the production of many of our favourite foodstuffs. The book is worth a read for that aspect alone.
January 20, 2021
An 'add-on' Christmas gift from my brother after he had listened to Mark Riddaway on Radio London and realised that I'd have the credentials to enjoy this sort of book. He was right. Oh, and this was the 'hard stuff' - a printed, bound copy of the book.
A reasonably light and frothy (nicely developed crema?) account of the provenance, discovery, distribution and use of ingredients which are now everyday familiars for most of us. Along with the history of greed, violence and exploitation which rather too often is needed to underpin our full understanding and appreciation of what we are eating.
Just a touch over three and a half stars I reckon. But you'll see that I've elevated it to four on account of nuggets* such as (#spoileralert) Eliza Acton having introduced the 'Pot Noodle Curry' at least a hundred years earlier than most think!
The chapters devoted to each ingredient are self-contained but 'dipping in' is likely to lead to enticement into one more chapter at the very least. A definite source of entertainment. I wasn't in the least offended by its distraction from the real business of cooking and eating. In fact it inspired me to do just a little more of those very things.
*Mark Riddaway does not challenge Robert C. Baker's claim on the chicken nugget.
A reasonably light and frothy (nicely developed crema?) account of the provenance, discovery, distribution and use of ingredients which are now everyday familiars for most of us. Along with the history of greed, violence and exploitation which rather too often is needed to underpin our full understanding and appreciation of what we are eating.
Just a touch over three and a half stars I reckon. But you'll see that I've elevated it to four on account of nuggets* such as (#spoileralert) Eliza Acton having introduced the 'Pot Noodle Curry' at least a hundred years earlier than most think!
The chapters devoted to each ingredient are self-contained but 'dipping in' is likely to lead to enticement into one more chapter at the very least. A definite source of entertainment. I wasn't in the least offended by its distraction from the real business of cooking and eating. In fact it inspired me to do just a little more of those very things.
*Mark Riddaway does not challenge Robert C. Baker's claim on the chicken nugget.
January 3, 2021
Great history. A fun and informative read. I moved through the book with my mouth watering for one food to the next as the chapters changed.
May 17, 2021
Book is great. I love a food history book that acknowledges the negative effects of colonialism and imperialism on food production.
July 2, 2025
An interesting series of unconnected essays, each one covering a specific food item that historically was sold in Borough Market in London. Like many food histories, it combines mouth-watering descriptions with puzzling and even sometimes gross ones from the past. Originating in columns for the market's in-house magazine, each essay is heavily researched, but by their very nature there's no connective tissue between them. Also, this is obvious and not inherently a negative, but of course the book is written from the perspective of how the foods have evolved in Britain, so sometimes that could be limiting.
On a personal note, I bought this book at Borough Market during my "baby moon" to London, started reading it while in the hospital awaiting the birth of my first child, and now finished it just shy of her first birthday (hey it's hard to read with a newborn). So this book has a special place in heart — and stomach.
On a personal note, I bought this book at Borough Market during my "baby moon" to London, started reading it while in the hospital awaiting the birth of my first child, and now finished it just shy of her first birthday (hey it's hard to read with a newborn). So this book has a special place in heart — and stomach.
September 8, 2023
Not so much a book about Borough Market (although there are a few references) as about food. I dedicates chapters to specific foodstuffs (e.g. apples, vinegar, pasta, eels!) and traces the history with lots of obscure facts and the occasional amusing anecdote. Nothing not to like if you are interested in the history of food. Personally I would have liked more recent history and less of the ancient origins but just a personal preference.
August 24, 2022
Very interesting take on history of daily food and trade
July 30, 2024
Informative and nicely-pitched/paced.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews