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Loading... Arabella Boxer's Book of English Food (Penguin Cookery Library) (edition 1993)by Arabella Boxer (Author)
Work InformationArabella Boxer's book of English food by Arabella Boxer
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Arabella Boxer's Book of English Food describes the delicious dishes - and the social conditions in which they were prepared, cooked and eaten - in the short span between the two World Wars when English cooking suddenly blossomed. The food in these wonderful recipes comes from the great country houses, where little had changed since Victorian times, the large houses in London and the South, where fashionable hostesses vied with each other to entertain the most distinguished guests at their tables, and less grand establishments, like those in Bloomsbury where the painters and writers of the day contrived to lead cultured and civilised lives on little money. No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)641.5942Technology Home and family management Food And Drink Cooking, cookbooks Cooking characteristic of specific geographic environments, ethnic cooking Europe England & WalesLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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There is no denying that, even among people who should know better, English cooking has a poor reputation. Boxer's thesis is that this is unfair. Between the wars there was a move away from stodgy Edwardian cooking, driven by a shortage of servants and the introduction of modern cooking equipment. (We are not talking about the working class, whose diet remained atrocious.) The momentum was lost after the Second World War, with Elizabeth David beginning a vogue for foreign cuisines that has not abated until very recently.
Boxer was born in 1934, and the introductions to each chapter include reminiscences from her own upper-class childhood, setting the food in its cultural context. The recipes are all sourced from books of the period; a great many of them are familiar to anyone raised on what I like to think of as "good plain cooking" of the British style (Boxer cannot avoid Scottish recipes, being Scottish herself).
Recommended to anyone with an interest in social history, or in unfussy, delicious recipes. If, like me, you are interested in both, you are in for a real treat. ( )