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Product Description
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There is nothing new under the sun. As Kate Colquhoun’s utterly fascinating Taste proves, this nation has always been fascinated by food and cookery, even though it's the more recent explosion of media interest that has made the subject seem omnipresent. Subtitled The Story of Britain through its Cooking, Colquhoun’s brief is to take us on a mesmerising journey from the Roman era right up to the age of bullying TV celebrity chefs.
The book arrives emblazoned with recommendations from such august cookery figures as Marguerite Patten, and mixes sharp social history into its examination of 2000 years of culinary experimentation and achievement. The early Britons enjoyed wild boar feasts, and such delicacies as olive oil and spices were introduced in Roman Britain, and there have been few periods when the English have not been trying to tickle the taste buds in new and inventive ways (even in the straightened times of wartime rationing, great invention could be found in utilising what few ingredients were available).
Colquhoun poses (and answers) a massive range of intriguing questions such as: what was the common factor between roast meat and morality in the 18th century? And why did the Black Death inaugurate new conditions for rural baking? Colquhoun set herself a daunting task with this ambitious book, but Taste succeeds triumphantly in both entertaining and informing. If you read it, you'll be able to enlighten (or bore) friends with a million and one arcane facts about food and cookery. But the thing that most of us will take away from the book is the realisation that the novelties of modern cooking that we pride ourselves on are not quite as novel as we thought -- our ancestors were very imaginative in the kitchen. --Barry Forshaw --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
'Every page is packed with good things, historical and culinary, peppered with personalities and salted with wit' Jenny Uglow 'This excellent history of the nation's appetites is to be savoured ... Fascinating' Observer 'Taste is a treat, stuffed with scholarly information yet whisked up as light as a souffle' Sunday Telegraph 'As Colquhoun's meaty and spicy Taste reveals, what and how we ate is amazing, amusing and revealing ... a culinary masterpiece' Country Life
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
39 of 39 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a fascinating, scholarly - but immensely readable - history of British cuisine, from a starter of prehistoric 'bog butters' and gritty bread cooked on hot stones, through sumptuous medieval feasts, Samuel Pepys's boeuf -a-la-mode dinner (price 6 shillings) in a swanky French restaurant, and to follow a slice of Jane Austen's rabbit pie picnic ... in fact, it's a centuries-long historical banquet progressing to M&S ready-meals and Nigella's 'ironic' cup-cakes. It is crammed as full of interesting details as raisins in a Christmas pudding. And for all that British cuisine has oft been derided, I found myself thinking several times through the centuries, "Oh, I wish I could have tasted that!'
20 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I'm only just over halfway through this book but I have to give it five stars now.
Not only is it extremely well-researched, it is written in a very approachable style that has had me laughing out loud at times. It is packed with facts, useless information, stomach-turning moments that make me grateful I'm a vegetarian (dishes garnished with cockscombs and sweetbreads) and flashes of pure envy (early ice-creams moulded into painted fruits).
My partner is waiting to read "Taste" after me, despite being constantly regaled with my snippets of it, as it is a fantastic piece of social history. The only tiny criticism I can offer is that is would be even better if it was counterbalanced by a bit more information about the cooking habits of the lower classes, but it's a fascinating read nevertheless.
Not only is it extremely well-researched, it is written in a very approachable style that has had me laughing out loud at times. It is packed with facts, useless information, stomach-turning moments that make me grateful I'm a vegetarian (dishes garnished with cockscombs and sweetbreads) and flashes of pure envy (early ice-creams moulded into painted fruits).
My partner is waiting to read "Taste" after me, despite being constantly regaled with my snippets of it, as it is a fantastic piece of social history. The only tiny criticism I can offer is that is would be even better if it was counterbalanced by a bit more information about the cooking habits of the lower classes, but it's a fascinating read nevertheless.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
The breadth of the English palate
8 Jan 2008
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Victorian England may have started a downward trend in culinary preferences, (lasting well into the twentieth century) but one would never know it after reading Kate Colquhoun's fact-filled new book, "Taste", a compilation of everything digestible from the Middle Ages onward. Colquhoun will have the reader scrambling for his or her dictionary at almost every turn of the page as she sorts out the foodstuffs, cooking, dining and their historical analogies. It's an exhaustive and compelling offering.
The author is consistent in her reminders that in earlier centuries the Brits were really onto something in terms of what they ate. The Tudors and the Stuarts were no slacks when it came to fine dining...indeed they gave gluttony its headstart. But the masses, too, enjoyed a growing identity with their own comestibles as Britain lurched between rulers and conquests. The French make more than a cameo appearance throughout "Taste", much to the liking or the chagrin of their Channel counterparts. (depending on the season, so to speak) Colquhoun is very good at connecting the dots of history and food and she brightens the chapters by telling us how certain phrases like "done to a turn" or "making ends meet" actually came out of kitchen connections.
"Taste" often gets buried under its own encyclopaedic weight. There's almost too much information of every table listing... so much so that a certain somnolence becomes the reader. A heavier editing and a lighter narrative would have helped this book, but nonetheless, "Taste" is a welcome addition to a growing number of food histories. Colquhoun has researched her material thoroughly and that is very much to her credit. To that end, "Taste" is worth the read.
The author is consistent in her reminders that in earlier centuries the Brits were really onto something in terms of what they ate. The Tudors and the Stuarts were no slacks when it came to fine dining...indeed they gave gluttony its headstart. But the masses, too, enjoyed a growing identity with their own comestibles as Britain lurched between rulers and conquests. The French make more than a cameo appearance throughout "Taste", much to the liking or the chagrin of their Channel counterparts. (depending on the season, so to speak) Colquhoun is very good at connecting the dots of history and food and she brightens the chapters by telling us how certain phrases like "done to a turn" or "making ends meet" actually came out of kitchen connections.
"Taste" often gets buried under its own encyclopaedic weight. There's almost too much information of every table listing... so much so that a certain somnolence becomes the reader. A heavier editing and a lighter narrative would have helped this book, but nonetheless, "Taste" is a welcome addition to a growing number of food histories. Colquhoun has researched her material thoroughly and that is very much to her credit. To that end, "Taste" is worth the read.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Inside the English Stomach
23 July 2008
Format:Hardcover
Though being terribly fond of food, I have absolutely no interest in its preparation. Having said that, I do have an abiding, indeed, insatiable, ahem, appetite for "social history," particularly that of Great Britain. [Indeed, what is more "social" than food and the consumption thereof?] And if you share this particular passion, then you will undoubtedly savor "Taste." Ms. Colquhoun is sufficiently comfortable with her subject matter that she is able to move from hand to mouth, hearth to table, plate to plate, and century to century with the same lighthearted yet authoritative dexterity displayed by the author of one of my favorite books of the last several years, Judith Flanders in "Inside the Victorian Home." One need not pay much attention to the ingredients of every dish described to get the gist of what the food represented in the particular period under discussion, but one can't help marvel at the research undoubtedly required to produce the book and the author's enviable writing abilities which make what could have been a humdrum tale such a terrific read. Ms. Colquhoun (somewhat audaciously) undertook to tell the story of Britain through its cooking, and that is exactly what she's done, to the delight and edification of her readers. Highly recommended.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
A culinary tour of Britain through the centuries
20 April 2008
Format:Hardcover
From table-groaning Roman feasts (for men only!) to today's packaged foods and ethnic varieties, journalist Colquhoun takes the reader on a fascinating and comprehensive culinary tour of Britain through the centuries.
While she herself never refers to the term "British cuisine" as an oxymoron, she quotes plenty of travelers - lots of them French - who bemoan the lack of anything good to eat. An exception, however, is the 17th century visitor Henri Misson who exclaims, "BLESSED BE HE THAT INVENTED PUDDING."
Delving into diaries, letters and cookbooks galore, Colquhoun describes the tables of the rich, the poor and those in between, the fads, imports, techniques and equipment that transformed British kitchens through the centuries. From the vantage point of the kitchen, she explores manners, morals and politics, giving us a lively, taste- and scent-infused social history.
Moving chronologically, she organizes her chapters by era, i.e., Roman, Medieval, Tudor, etc. She describes the influences on cooking, from the craze for sugaring everything (increased availability) in Elizabethan times to Cromwell's Puritan parsimony.
Coffee was a novelty in the 1600s and during Cromwell's reign "Coffee houses appealed to a society in which ale houses and taverns were frowned on." Trade routes naturally affected the availability and influx of new foods and ingredients and Colquhoun shows the influences of new ingredients, from the spices of the East to the New World's tomato and chocolate.
There are lots of entertaining descriptions of the excess and extravagance of the rich and powerful, but Colquhoun also takes us into the more intimate and practical kitchens of the aspiring middle class. She shows how the industrial revolution ravaged the diet of the poor and how modernity has continued the trend of removing us from an intimate knowledge of raw food and where it comes from, while at the same time celebrating a back-to-the-land culinary style.
Filled with detail, fashion and personality; opinionated, witty and thoughtful, Colquhoun succeeds in looking at the whole of British life through its food.
While she herself never refers to the term "British cuisine" as an oxymoron, she quotes plenty of travelers - lots of them French - who bemoan the lack of anything good to eat. An exception, however, is the 17th century visitor Henri Misson who exclaims, "BLESSED BE HE THAT INVENTED PUDDING."
Delving into diaries, letters and cookbooks galore, Colquhoun describes the tables of the rich, the poor and those in between, the fads, imports, techniques and equipment that transformed British kitchens through the centuries. From the vantage point of the kitchen, she explores manners, morals and politics, giving us a lively, taste- and scent-infused social history.
Moving chronologically, she organizes her chapters by era, i.e., Roman, Medieval, Tudor, etc. She describes the influences on cooking, from the craze for sugaring everything (increased availability) in Elizabethan times to Cromwell's Puritan parsimony.
Coffee was a novelty in the 1600s and during Cromwell's reign "Coffee houses appealed to a society in which ale houses and taverns were frowned on." Trade routes naturally affected the availability and influx of new foods and ingredients and Colquhoun shows the influences of new ingredients, from the spices of the East to the New World's tomato and chocolate.
There are lots of entertaining descriptions of the excess and extravagance of the rich and powerful, but Colquhoun also takes us into the more intimate and practical kitchens of the aspiring middle class. She shows how the industrial revolution ravaged the diet of the poor and how modernity has continued the trend of removing us from an intimate knowledge of raw food and where it comes from, while at the same time celebrating a back-to-the-land culinary style.
Filled with detail, fashion and personality; opinionated, witty and thoughtful, Colquhoun succeeds in looking at the whole of British life through its food.
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