Pudding & me

For nearly two years, my life has revolved around the British pudding. A political pamphlet of the 1700s said, ‘The Head of Man is like a Pudding’ (A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling, 1726); and on many occasions while writing this book my head did feel like a pudding. One with delightful air holes, speckled with currants and covered in rich eggy custard sauce.

The task of uncovering the history of the British pudding consisted of ploughing through about two hundred books: some historical and some written about history or people; some books were poems, diaries and political pamphlets. I started collecting the antique cookery books I couldn’t consult online or at libraries; handwritten notebooks and postcards; looking for clues in every imaginable place. Then I set out to collect the original moulds in which these puddings had been made through the ages. Needless to say, when you are dealing with such rarities they take a long time to gather and a greedy bite out of your savings too.

But this wasn’t all: the book needed pictures, and as I am a food and lifestyle photographer, I did the photography for my own book – and the design for that matter – and my husband, a talented illustrator, created the wicked illustrations that tell part of the story.

But the recipe shots all needed plates and things, and I wanted them all to be of English make, so I needed to collect those too. Burleigh, one of England’s oldest surviving potteries (with whom I have a lovely relationship), kindly sent me some pottery, and the rest I gathered from markets and the usual online sources.

This was going to be a fairly straightforward project: a pudding book, except it became a project that would be with me for two years, and one that would dictate my life and my dreams at times. It has been an education. And although my quest has occasionally been nerve-racking – partly because I do not live in Britain, but mostly because I do not come from a scholarly background – I would dip my spoon in this bowl again.

Luckily I had a base to start from: I already knew a lot about British food and culture, having blogged about it for five years. I have been an Anglophile since I was a little girl; I loved England before I knew what the word love meant. We travelled around England, Scotland and Wales and I saw many beautiful villages, castles and poetic landscapes. I enjoyed the regional food and pub classics, and as I was a picky eater, getting me to eat was no easy task. I remember my mum telling me one time that all my childhood memories seem to be connected to the food I ate. So food was always on my mind, even then.

Writing at first for an international audience, I needed to paint a picture of Britain’s – in particular, England’s – social history. This is important, to show how the pudding evolved from the times of the Roman occupation until the present day. But it is also important to give some kind of explanation about why British food went from being the lauded subject of diarists and letter writers to a subject of ridicule.

This book is a tribute to the English cookery writers of the past. The master chefs to kings and queens, the female cookbook writers – of which there are surprisingly plenty – the confectioners, the physicians, the poets, the cookery teachers and those writers – usually ladies again – who were driven by a profound passion for English food.

One of these women, Florence White, established the English Folk Cookery Association in 1928 and published a compendium of traditional English recipes in Good Things in England (1932) as well as several other works on cookery. Florence perfectly expressed my feelings for this project of mine:

I am not blowing my own trumpet; gladly and gratefully I acknowledge that the cookery wisdom in this book is the heritage of all of us from Yesteryear. My job has simply been to select and record it.

Good English Food, 1952

There are enough books with exciting new recipes, but I think it is important to revive these historical recipes, which are equally special, if not more special because they were lovingly prepared so long ago. It fits into my philosophy of ‘be happy with what you have’ and that is what this is all about. I am blowing new life into something that was already there for us to enjoy, but is so often overlooked or forgotten.

Why British food?

So why would a Flemish girl dive into British food and not the more fashionable and socially acceptable French or Italian cookery?

British food has evolved much more than French or Italian food. First by the different invaders of the island who each brought their own culture with them; then by the religious consequences of the Protestant Reformation, which forbade the richly spiced cuisine of medieval times. Before the Reformation, most recipes in English, French and Italian recipe books were similar and in some cases the same. Blancmange is a great example, as the name of this dish is identical in all these nations’ cookbooks, and it can even be found in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch and Scandinavian books.

Most of these early cookery books also had dishes that were especially designed for Lent, as the Catholic faith forbade the consumption of warm-blooded animals and eggs on the fast days that took up nearly a third of the year. After the Reformation, when England became Protestant – and especially during the reign of the Puritan Cromwell – this changed. Not only was the use of dried fruits and spices deemed too excessive and opulent, ‘Lenten dishes’ – which often involved counterfeit meat dishes – were found too fussy, too Catholic and too French. As France was a Catholic nation that had always tried to gain power over England – and vice versa – it was considered the enemy.

So what’s the original story of this Catholic–French vendetta? Charles I was beheaded for treason, one of the reasons being the reintroducing of several Catholic rituals following his marriage to a Catholic French princess. His son, the future king, fled to France; a Puritan republic took over under rule of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell to rid England of the frivolous Catholic ways … and Catholic people. Cromwell died and the exiled Charles II was restored to the throne. With the return of the king came an appetite for French food and fashion and the approval of the food ways of pre-Cromwell and pre-Reformation England, which were now just assumed to be French.

But England’s cuisine had evolved and the simpler and more honest way of cooking that was favoured after the Reformation continued as common fare and was joined by some of the foods the English had loved from the centuries before.

The love–hate relationship continued when James succeeded Charles II. The political elite found James too pro-French, and when he produced a Catholic heir, tempers rose. Eventually he was deposed and fled to France. After a Protestant invasion, his Protestant daughter Mary became a true Protestant queen and no other Catholic would ever sit on the British throne.

How all of this affected the pudding and British food you can read in the pages of this book, where I go into further detail, explaining how enclosures of common land drove people to capitalism and others to starvation.

Today, Britain is full of small independent cafés and restaurants serving up beautiful regional food such as Lancashire hot-pots, Melton Mowbray pies, Aylesbury duck and Bakewell pudding. The capital has an exciting scene of restaurants cooking up modern British food and also the newest of the cuisines from all over the world. You can taste the world in Britain, but you can also taste Britain in Britain.

And this is the strength of the cuisine. Young people in Britain will eat a steamed bun or a bowl of ramen one day, fish and chips on the next, and on a Saturday evening they will go in to town to enjoy some exciting new British cuisine, prepared with regional ingredients to be proud of. On Sunday they will close the week with a proper home-cooked Sunday roast with Yorkshire puds and more pud for pudding.

There was a time when Europe laughed at British food, and there was a moment when even a lot of Brits were starting to laugh at it. But that time has changed, and will continue to change.

I am a Flemish girl writing this, brought up on Belgian food, which is in its essence French. But I love British food: I love jellied eels, traditional pie and mash, a proper fish and chips, venison pudding, steak and ale pie, and a proper roasted loin of pork with crackling and Yorkshire puddings to soak up all the juices. I love the honesty of the food, the tradition and the history, and I hope you will too.

Regula Ysewijn

All the proofe of a pudding, is in the eating

William Camden, Remaines of a Greater Worke, 1605

English Proverb
Meaning: you can only judge something after you have experienced it.

Origin: the earliest version was a medieval proverb, quoted in the poem Kyng Alisaunder (transcribed by Henry Weber, 1810):
“Hit is y-writein, Every thyng, Himseolf sheweth in tastyng.”