Food in England

Book by Dorothy Hartley

Food in England

Cover of first edition, 1954

Author| Dorothy Hartley
Illustrator| Dorothy Hartley, and various old sources
Subject| English cuisine
Genre| History, cookery book
Publisher| Macdonald

Publication date

| 1954
Pages| 676

Food in England is a 1954 book by the social historian Dorothy Hartley. It is both a cookery book and a history of English cuisine. It was acclaimed on publication; the contemporary critic Harold Nicolson described the book as a classic. It has remained in print ever since.

The book provides what has been called an idiosyncratic[1] and a combative[2] take on the history of English cooking. The book is unusual as a history in not citing its sources, serving more as an oral social history from Hartley's own experiences as she travelled England as a journalist for the Daily Sketch, interviewing "the last generation to have had countryside lives sharing something in common with the Tudors."[3] The book strikes some readers as principally a history,[4] but it consists mainly of recipes. Some of these such as stargazey pie are old-fashioned, but all are practical recipes that can be cooked.

## Context[edit]

Dorothy Hartley's mother was from Froncysylltau, near Llangollen in North Wales, where the family owned quarries and property. In 1933 Hartley moved to a house in Froncysylltau, where she lived for the rest of her life.[5] It was there that she began work on the book for which she is best known,[6] Food in England, leading to its publication in 1954.

## Book[edit]

### Approach[edit]

Most of the chapters address aspects of English food, whether types of food such as meat, eggs, fungi, and bread, or ways of dealing with food such as salting, drying and preserving. Some chapters such as 'Elizabethan households' are explicitly historical. Every chapter, however, is also a history.[3] For example, chapter V, Meat, discusses "a rather interesting mediaeval miracle" and illustrates a traditional "Colonial Travelling Meat Safe of Mosquito Net".[7] The text switches repeatedly from instructions ("To prepare mutton fat for a mutton piecrust, melt it over a bowl of hot water") to historical asides ("Mutton fat was used in the mountain-sheep districts for the same purposes as suet or goose-grease in the valleys").[8] Many of the processes are distinctly old-fashioned; thus, Hartley describes basting, dredging, and frothing, switching between the past and present tenses: "Dredging. This was done between bastings. Thus you dredge with powders or spices to give flavour, or with acid juices, or chopped herbs, which the pouring fat washes down into the crevices of the roasting meat."[3][9]

A substantial part of the text consists of recipes. In the Meat chapter, these begin with recipes for beef, including "Baron of Beef", "Sirloin (Norman-French, sur loin)", "Rib of Beef", "Boiled Beef with Carrots", and "Oat Pudding, for Boiled Beef".[10] Each recipe has a heading in italics; some have an illustration, drawn by Hartley, or else a quotation or proverb. There is no list of ingredients. The first paragraph often describes the dish or its ingredients. Thus for sirloin, she advises "This is the best beef joint and should be roasted. Never have the undercut taken out...". The instructions are given in a few paragraphs: "Let the sirloin be well hung; dust it lightly with dry mustard, pepper and brown flour to give a crisp crust; bed the fat end well under the lean undercut, and secure in place with string or carefully placed skewer. Roast carefully, basting frequently."[11]

Where quantities or cooking temperatures have to be specified, these are included in the instructions; otherwise, matters are left to the cook's discretion. Thus in "Spice Sauce (sauce for fish or flesh)", Hartley directs "Take a quart of sharp cider, .... some mace, a few cloves, some lemon peel, horse-radish root sliced, some sweet herbs, 6 schaloys [shallots], 8 anchovies, 3 spoonfulls of shred red peppers..."[12]

For baking, where exact instructions are needed, these are given in Imperial units, but the oven temperature and timing are again left mainly to the cook's experience. Thus for "Bath Buns", she instructs: "Make a light dough with 1/2 lb. of flour, 1/4 lb. of butter or lard, 1 oz. of castor sugar, 2 eggs, 1/2 pint of lukewarm milk, and about 1.2 oz. of yeast. Rub butter into flour; blend ... Set it to rise in a warm place, ... bake lightly and thoroughly till golden brown."[13]

### Contents[edit]

Food in England has 27 chapters:

* I Introduction
* II Some English Kitchens
* III Basic English
* IV Fuels and Fireplaces
* V Meat
* VI Poultry and Game
* VII Eggs
* VIII Mediaeval feast and famine
* IX Trade, Magic and Religious Cooking
* X Fish
* XI Seaweeds
* XII Fungi
* XIII Elizabethan households
* XIV The New World and the Sailors' Cook
* XV Salting, drying and preserving
* XVI The House and Garden in 1600
* XVII Vegetables
* XVIII New Freedom
* XIX Coaching Days
* XX Fruits, Herbs, Seeds and Flowers
* XXI The Hafod
* XXII Dairy produce
* XXIII Bread
* XXIV Drinks
* XXV The Industrial Revolution
* XXVI Pies, Puddings, Pastries, Cakes
* XXVII Sundry household matters

There is a bibliography and an index.

### Editions[edit]

* 1954, 1st edition, London: Macdonald
* 1956, 2nd impression, London: Macdonald
* 1962, 3rd impression, London: Macdonald
* 1963, London: Readers Union
* 1964, London: Macdonald
* 1973, new impression, London: Macdonald
* 1975, 2nd edition, London: Macdonald
* 1979, London: Macdonald
* 1985, London: Futura
* 1996, London: Little, Brown
* 1999, London: Warner
* 2009, London: Piatkus

## Reception[edit]

### Contemporary[edit]

On its publication in 1954, the book was received with immediate acclaim, and has remained in print ever since. The Manchester Guardian called it "fascinating…unusually readable";[14] Harold Nicolson in The Observer said, "it will become a classic", though he made gentle fun of the combative Englishness of Hartley's culinary pronouncements.[2]

### Modern[edit]

The Sunday Times, reviewing the seventh edition of the book, wrote "For food scholarship at its best see Dorothy Hartley's robust, idiosyncratic, irresistible Food in England... As packed with diverse and fascinating information as a Scotch bun with fruit, this untidy bundle of erudition is held together by the writer's huge enjoyment of her subject, her immense curiosity about everything to do with the growth, preparation, preservation and eating of food in this country since the Middle Ages."[1]

The cultural historian Panikos Panayi describes the book as a tour de force, seminal, and richly illustrated; and he notes that Food in England is partly a recipe book, partly a history. He contrasts it favourably with Philip Harben's Traditional Dishes of Britain, published a year earlier, which he criticises as accepting the "stereotypical stalwarts of British food", whereas Hartley rightly accepts (Panayi quotes) that "foreign dishes ... like the foreigners, become 'naturalised English'".[15]

The historian of food Bee Wilson, rereading "this endearing work" 58 years on for The Guardian, wrote that she had remembered it as a history book and an epic account of English cooking, "interspersed with recipes." She was therefore "startled" to find that almost the whole of the text is "taken up with practical recipes and techniques, with very little historical narrative." Wilson finds the book as Hartley explicitly intended, an untidy kitchen, "a warm friendly place". For Hartley, writes Wilson, "the past is not a foreign country", but ever-present. She notes that Hartley "announces dogmatically" that English cooking is old-fashioned "because we like it that way." Wilson finds "Hartley's devotion to archaic recipes such as stargazey pie and posset ... mildly crazed." But whether mad or not, Hartley "approaches the cuisine of the past with the humour and sharpness of a journalist."[4]

The Historic Royal Palaces curator Lucy Worsley presented a BBC film, 'Food in England', The Lost World of Dorothy Hartley, on 6 November 2015.[16] Worsley, writing in The Telegraph, calls Food in England "the definitive history of the way the English eat." She describes the book as "laden with odd facts and folklore ... a curious mixture of cookery, history, anthropology and even magic, ... with her own strong and lively illustrations." She admits it is not a conventional history, since Hartley breaks "the first rule of the historian: to cite her evidence. She wasn't fond of footnotes." In a year of filming Hartley's places and people she knew, Worsley discovered that "my frustration with her technique as historian was misplaced." Hartley had travelled continually to gather materials for her weekly Daily Sketch column,[a] sometimes sleeping rough "in a hedge". The work is thus effectively, Worsley argues, an oral history, as Hartley interviewed "the last generation to have had countryside lives sharing something in common with the Tudors." The emphasis on local, seasonal food chimes well, Worsley suggests, with the modern trend for just those things.[3]

The Museum of English Rural Life at the University of Reading curates the Dorothy Hartley collection. It cites the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography's entry on Hartley,[18] calling Food in England "Arguably her best work, and the one for which she will be remembered". It calls the book "as full of magic and potions as any medieval herbal."[6]

## Notes[edit]

1. ^ Her dispatches to the Daily Sketch 1933–1936 have been collected in a book[17]

## References[edit]

1. ^ a b Quoted at "Dorothy Hartley"' Gale Literary Databases: Contemporary Authors, accessed 31 January 2010 (subscription required)
2. ^ a b Nicolson, Harold, "English Fare", The Observer, 22 August 1954, p. 7
3. ^ a b c d Worsley, Lucy (5 November 2012). "In praise of Dorothy Hartley's Food in England". The Telegraph. Retrieved 20 April 2016.
4. ^ a b Wilson, Bee (14 December 2012). "Bee Wilson: rereading Food in England by Dorothy Hartley". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 April 2016.
5. ^ Wondrausch, Mary, "Hartley, Dorothy Rosaman (1893–1985)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
6. ^ a b "The Museum of English Rural Life: The Dorothy Hartley Collection". University of Reading. Retrieved 21 April 2016.
7. ^ Hartley, pp. 61–62
8. ^ Hartley, p. 64
9. ^ Hartley, p. 65
10. ^ Hartley, pp. 71–75
11. ^ Hartley, p. 73
12. ^ Hartley, p. 95
13. ^ Hartley, p. 511
14. ^ The Manchester Guardian, 145 May 1954, p. 5
15. ^ Panayi, Panikos (2010) [2008]. Spicing Up Britain. Reaktion Books. pp. 16, 19, 21. ISBN 978-1-86189-658-2.
16. ^ Worsley, Lucy. "New BBC film: 'Food in England, The Lost World of Dorothy Hartley'". Lucy Worsley. Retrieved 19 April 2016.
17. ^ Hartley, Dorothy; Worsley, Lucy (2012). Lost World: England 1933-1936. Prospect Books. ISBN 978-1-903-01897-2..
18. ^ Wondrausch, Mary (2004). "Hartley, Dorothy Rosaman (1893-1985)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/50449. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) (subscription required)

* v
* t
* e

English cuisine

Roman times|

| Dishes|

* Sausages

|

Middle Ages
to 15th century|

| Exemplars|

* Utilis Coquinario (c. 1300)
* The Forme of Cury (c. 1390)

|

Dishes|

* Apple pie
* Bacon
* Banbury cake
* Cheesecake
* Custard
* Game pie
* Gingerbread
* Kippers
* Mince pie
* Mortis
* Pasty
* Pease pudding
* Pie
* Pottage

16th century|

| Exemplars|

* Richard Pynson (The Boke of Cokery, 1500)
* Thomas Dawson (The Good Huswifes Jewell, 1585)

|

Dishes|

* Black pudding
* Fruit fool
* Pancake
* Scones
* Syllabub
* Trifle (without jelly)

17th century|

| Exemplars|

* Elinor Fettiplace (Receipt Book, 1604)
* Gervase Markham (The English Huswife, 1615)
* Robert May (The Accomplisht Cook, 1660)
* Hannah Woolley (The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet 1670)
* Kenelm Digby (The Closet Opened 1699)

|

Dishes|

* Battalia pie
* Currant bun
* Queen of Puddings
* Sponge cake
* Sussex pond pudding
* Sweet and sour
* Tea

18th century|

| Exemplars|

* Mary Kettilby (A Collection of Above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physick and Surgery 1714)
* Mary Eales (Mrs Mary Eales's Receipts 1718)
* John Nott (The Cooks and Confectioners Dictionary, 1723)
* Eliza Smith (The Compleat Housewife 1727)
* Hannah Glasse (The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy 1747)
* Ann Cook (Professed Cookery, 1754)
* Martha Bradley (The British Housewife 1758)
* Elizabeth Raffald (The Experienced English Housekeeper 1769)
* Richard Briggs (The English Art of Cookery 1788)
* William Augustus Henderson (The Housekeeper's Instructor 1791)

|

Dishes|

* Bread and butter pudding
* Christmas pudding
* Chutney
* Curry
* Cottage or Shepherd's pie
* Cumberland rum nicky
* Eccles cake
* Jellied eels
* Jugged hare
* Ketchup
* Marmalade
* Parkin
* Piccalilli
* Pork pie
* Roast beef
* Sandwich
* Scouse
* Suet pudding
* Toad in the hole
* Trifle (with jelly)
* Welsh rarebit
* Yorkshire pudding

19th century|

| Exemplars|

* Maria Rundell (A New System of Domestic Cookery 1806)
* Eliza Acton (Modern Cookery for Private Families 1845)
* Charles Elmé Francatelli (The Modern Cook 1846)
* Isabella Beeton (Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management 1861)

|

Dishes|

* Bubble and squeak
* Cauliflower cheese
* Cobbler
* Devilled kidneys
* Faggots
* Fish and chips
* Full English breakfast
* HP Sauce
* Ice cream cone
* Lancashire hotpot
* Potted shrimps
* Sausage roll
* Steak and kidney pudding
* Battenberg cake
* Eton mess
* Eve's pudding
* Jam roly-poly
* Lardy cake
* Madeira cake
* Summer pudding
* Windsor soup
* Worcestershire sauce

20th century|

| Exemplars|

* Florence Petty
* Elizabeth David (A Book of Mediterranean Food 1950)
* Dorothy Hartley (Food in England 1954)
* Constance Spry
* Fanny Cradock
* Marguerite Patten
* Jane Grigson
* Delia Smith
* Rick Stein
* Nigel Slater
* Keith Floyd
* Marco Pierre White
* Nigella Lawson
* Jamie Oliver
* Fergus Henderson (The Whole Beast 1999)
* Gordon Ramsay
* Gary Rhodes
* Mary Berry

|

Dishes|

* Bakewell tart
* Beef Wellington
* Carrot cake
* Chicken tikka masala
* Coronation chicken
* Crumble
* Knickerbocker glory
* Ploughman's lunch
* Salad cream
* Sticky toffee pudding

21st century|

| Exemplars|

* Michel Roux Jr. (Le Gavroche)
* Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (River Cottage)
* Antony Worrall Thompson
* Heston Blumenthal (The Fat Duck)
* Clarissa Dickson Wright (A History of English Food 2011)
* Rachel Khoo

|

Dishes|

* Coronation quiche
* Platinum Pudding

Related|

* Food in England (1954)
* List of English dishes
* List of English cheeses
* List of savoury puddings
* List of sweet puddings
* Rationing in the United Kingdom

*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
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*[c.]: circa