English Food: A People's History

Most food history is about banquets. In thirty years’ time, when people read the food history of now, they will hear all about the coronation quiche, notwithstanding the fact that it doesn’t really represent a current food trend. Some people will loyally go ahead and make it, but it’s not really a good sampling of 2023 food culture. So I was interested in whether there was another way. I decided to go beyond cookbooks—because most food history is really based on recipe books—to sources for what people were actually eating, and how they were cooking.

There are two kinds of food historians. Ones who try out the recipes, and the ones who just copy them down. I’m the first kind. So I got really interested in how very few of us there are—there are honourable exceptions. Others will study without ever making their own bread or their own jam, or trying anything out themselves.

[Q: That sounds fun. Was it fun?]

Yes, actually too much fun, which is one reason why it took me ages. It’s also an inexhaustibly large topic, even confined just to England. My first draft was twice the length of the book actually published. And even so, the book is long, isn’t it?

But the interesting thing to me was that it isn’t like most other history, which is like writing a novel—this happens, then that happens because of this. In food history, you can’t connect things up like that. Things mysteriously appear and then disappear. I came to find that interesting, and learned to live with it.

The best books on The History of Food recommended by Diane Purkiss