A beautifully illusrated and produced social history of Britain through its food.
Along the way, Kate Colquhoun asks and answers a fascinating range of questions from the weighty to the lighthearted. Did the Romans use pepper? How did the Black Death lead to the beginning of rural baking? Why was the sale of fruit banned in 1569? How did we discover how to eat a banana? How did wartime rationing improve the national diet?
From Roman dinners through Anglo Saxon feasts and Tudor banquets, to Dickensian excess and the latest street food, every aspect of British culinary history is celebrated in a well-informed and vastly entertaining narrative. So fundamental is Colquhoun's subject that this book about what and how we used to eat becomes more than just a history of British cookery; rather, it is an involving and immediate social history of the British people, told through what they have eaten and how they have prepared and shared food down the centuries.
