I thought you might be interested in getting tickets for this special Serve it Forth Christmas event on 11 December called A Christmas Feast of the Uncanny. Tickets are just £5 (plus Eventbrite booking fee) and the event runs from 7:00pm to 8:45pm.
If you can’t make the whole event, the evening will be recorded and shared soon after.
In case you didn’t know, but Sam Bilton, Alessandra Pino and me are all big horror fans, and Christmas is associated with spooky, ghostly tales. We would love to see you there.
Serve it Forth Food History Festival invites you to an evening exploring the eerie side of Yuletide food traditions.
Step beyond the cozy glow of twinkling holiday lights and into a Christmas world where the shadows tell their own tales. A Christmas Feast of the Uncanny is an immersive online event that explores the eerie, strange, and deliciously dark side of Yuletide traditions through the lens of food.
Join the Serve It Forth team at this live virtual gathering to discover:
Why ghost stories are so popular at Christmas as we explore the food references in some of the lesser-known ghoulish tales from Charles Dickens and his like.
The significance of otherworldly beings like elves, witches and monsters at this time of the year and their relationship to food.
The origins of traditional Christmas foods and the old customs that linked them to fortune-telling and other forms of the supernatural.
It’s time for the now traditional end-of-season postbag episode of The British Food History Podcast, where I (attempt to) answer your questions, read out your comments and mull over your queries.
I’ll be disappearing for a couple of months, unless of course, you are a monthly subscriber, where there will be a bonus episode coming up for you to listen to via the website: Keeping Food Traditions Alive with Tom Parker Bowles, which was recorded live at the Serve it Forth Food History Festival on 18 October.
The British Food History Podcast is available on all podcast platforms. Please subscribe, rate and review. Alternatively, stream the episode via this Spotify embed:
If you can, support the podcast and blogs by becoming a £3 monthly subscriber, and unlock lots of premium content, including bonus blog posts and recipes, access to the Easter eggs and the secret podcast, or treat me to a one-off virtual pint or coffee please click here.
Remember: Fruit Pig are sponsoring the 9th season of the podcast. Visit their website www.fruitpig.co.uk to learn more about them, their journey, to find your local stockist and access their online shop.
Don’t forget, there will be postbag episodes in the future, so if you have any questions or queries about today’s episode, or indeed any episode, or have a question about the history of British food please email me at neil@britishfoodhistory.com, or on twitter and BlueSky @neilbuttery, or Instagram and Threads dr_neil_buttery. My DMs are open.
Earlier in the year, the fantastic Fruitpig(sponsors of the ninth season of the podcast) very kindly sent me some fresh pig’s blood so that I could try my hand at making some early modern black puddings, inspired by the recipes of Robert May, Kenelm Digby and Thomas Dawson. I made two versions: a savoury one and another sweetened with sugar and currants – both turned out to be delicious.
Listen to the episode of the podcast with Matthew and Grant aka Fruitpig!
A few years ago I read (I forget where) that blood thickens upon heating just like egg yolks, and I had an idea in the back of my mind that blood ice cream might be possible to make, knowing already that the black puddings of the early modern period were often sweet.
Please that the sweet black puddings tasted good, I set about to see if I could find any British examples of blood ice cream or, at least, something similar. I couldn’t find anything. However, I did discover in the pages of Jennifer McLagan’s excellent offal cookbook Odd Bits, a blood and chocolate ice cream recipe, adapted from an Italian set dessert called sanguinaccio alla Neapolitana: little pots of set chocolate custard, thickened with blood instead of egg yolks.
Encouraged by the fact I knew it could be done, I went about adapting my black pudding recipe into an ice cream. I have a good, basic vanilla ice cream recipe that I’ve been using for years, which in turn is based on my custard recipe, and all I did was swap out the eight egg yolks for 200 ml of pig’s blood. Not convinced that the blood would thicken things sufficiently, I popped in two egg yolks for good measure. The milk and cream were flavoured not with a vanilla pod, but the same aromatics as the black pudding: pepper, cloves, mace and dried mixed herbs. I really wanted to include the currants, but knowing they would freeze hard into bullets, I thought an overnight soak in some sherry would work well – not unlike modern rum and raisin ice cream. I chose sherry because it’s the closest thing we have to sack, the popular fortified wine of the early modern period, and a common addition to recipes.
Well, I am very pleased to say that it was a great success. It was the richest ice cream I have ever eaten: luxurious, aromatic and with a very slight metallic tang. I ate a scoop with one of my early modern white puddings. What a combination!
If you like the blogs and podcast I produce, please consider treating me to a virtual coffee or pint, or even a £3 monthly subscription: follow this link for more information.
Ingredients
300 ml milk
300 ml cream seeds
½ tsp bl peppercorns
1 tsp fennel
½ tsp cloves
2 blades of mace
1 tsp dried mixed herbs
200 ml fresh blood
2 egg yolks
160 g sugar
50 g currants
a few tablespoons of sweet or medium sherry overnight
Method
Pour the milk and cream into a saucepan. Crack the peppercorns and bruise the remaining spices in a pestle and mortar, and add to the milk and cream along with the dried herbs. Mix well, making sure everything has been submerged, and warm the mixture over a medium-low heat and bring everything to scalding point – i.e. just before the milk and cream boil.
Meanwhile, add the blood, egg yolks and sugar to a mixing bowl and whisk together well.
When the mix and cream mixture reaches scalding point, remove the pan from the heat and whisk in around a quarter of it into the blood mixture. When everything is incorporated, beat in the rest of the cream mixture, and pour the whole thing back into the saucepan.
The cooled blood-custard base and the macerated currants
Now keep whisking or stirring until the temperature reaches 80°C – you can tell this temperature is reached because the mixture thickens noticeably and coats the back of a spoon (check with a difital thermometer, if unsure). Take off the heat and pass the whole thing through a sieve into a clean bowl or tub. Leave to cool and refrigerate overnight. Soak the currants in sherry and leave those to macerate overnight too.
Next day, churn the mixture in an ice cream machine until a very thick soft-scoop consistency. As you wait, strain the currants (keep the sherry and drink it!). When the ice cream is almost ready, add the currants.
Pour the mixture into tubs and store in the freezer. Eaten within 3 months.
The ice cream ready to receive its currants and my serving suggestion!
My guest on The British Food History Podcast today is food historian and friend of the show Sam Bilton, podcaster and author of Much Ado About Cooking Delicious Shakespearean Feasts for Every Occasion, published by Headline and commissioned by Shakespeare’s Globe.
It was, of course, a great opportunity to talk about the food of Shakespearean England as well as the food and drink references in Shakespeare’s plays, and what they meant to those watching the plays at the time they were first performed.
A small selection of the wonderful photography from Sam’s book
We talked about lots of cookery manuscripts, the importance of keeping historical recipes relevant, capons, Early Modern bread and greedy Falstaff’s sack, amongst many other things.
The British Food History Podcast is available on all apps, or stream it here:
Those listening to the secret podcast can hear about horrible, sweet spinach tarts, Early Modern cakes, possets and more!
Remember: Fruit Pig are sponsoring the 9th season of the podcast. Visit their website www.fruitpig.co.uk to learn more about them, their journey, to find your local stockist and access their online shop.
If you can, support the podcast and blogs by becoming a £3 monthly subscriber, and unlock lots of premium content, including bonus blog posts and recipes, access to the easter eggs and the secret podcast, or treat me to a one-off virtual pint or coffee: click here.
Don’t forget, there will be postbag episodes in the future, so if you have any questions or queries about today’s episode, or indeed any episode, or have a question about the history of British food please email me at neil@britishfoodhistory.com, or leave a comment below.
My guest on The British Food History Podcast today is food historian Carwyn Graves, a specialist in the foodways and traditions of Wales, and we are talking about Welsh Sheep and Cattle – and their products.
Carwyn has written a wonderful book called Welsh Food Stories, published in 2022 by Calon, which explores more than two thousand years of history to discover the rich but forgotten heritage of Welsh foods – from oysters to cider, salted butter to salt-marsh lamb. Despite centuries of industry, ancient traditions have survived in pockets across the country among farmers, bakers, fisherfolk, brewers and growers who are taking Welsh food back to its roots, and trailblazing truly sustainable foods as they do so.
We talk about the importance of sheep and cattle in Wales’s physical and cultural landscape, salt marsh lamb, cawl, colostrum puddings, the Welsh and their love of roasted cheese and sheep fancying Cistercian monks – amongst many other things.
Listen via your favourite podcast app, or stream here via this embed:
Robert Burns, The Globe Inn & the Annandale Distillery with Jane Brown, Teresa Church & David Thomson –
The British Food History Podcast
Welcome to the second of a two-part special all about Burns Night.Burns Night, celebrated on Robert Burns’ birthday, 25th January, is a worldwide phenomenon and I wanted to make a couple of episodes focussing upon the night, the haggis, but also the other foods links regarding Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns.So, if you’re readying yourself for a Burns supper, I hope this episode gets you even more into the celebratory spirit. If you’re not marking Burns Night – well, hopefully after listening to this, you will be inspired to get yourself some haggis, neeps, tatties and a dram of whisky. Hopefully, a Man O'Words single malt from the excellent Annandale Distillery – why, well, you will find out very soon.Today’s episode is a jam-packed one where I speak with three guests all about Robert Burns and his links with Dumfriesshire, Southwest Scotland. First of all I speak with Jane Brown, Honorary President of the Robert Burns World Federation, and ex-manager of The Globe, Robert Burns’s favourite haunt when he lived in Dumfries during the last eight years of his life. Jane has attended and spoken at many Burns Nights all over the world, so there's no one better to talk about with Burns’s life which had several links with food and drink: there’s Burns Night and the Address to a Haggis, his time as an exciseman and as a farmer, and his time at the Globe. Then there’s the Globe itself and all of the precious artefacts contained within it that have been painstakingly conserved by owners Teresa Church and David Thomson.David and Teresa also own the Annandale Distillery, which produces a delicious and unique single malt whisky. It’s available unpeated and called Man O’Words, after Robert Burns, and the other is peated and called Man O’Sword, after the other local historical figure associated with Dumfries, Robert the Bruce. Like the Globe, the old distillery was saved, beautifully conserved and brought back to life by David and Teresa.In today’s episode we talk about Burns’s before and after graces, Burns’s penchant for scratching poetry on windows, the importance of cask size on the flavour of whisky, and just what exactly possessed David and Teresa to buy the Globe and a falling-down distillery – amongst many other things.The Globe Inn websiteAnnandale Distillery websiteThe Robert Burns World FederationFollow 1610 at the Globe on social media: Instagram @theglobeinn1610; Facebook https://www.facebook.com/theglobeinn/?locale=en_GB; X @The GlobeInn1610Follow Annandale Distillery on social media: Instagram: @annandale_distillery; Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/annandaledistillery/?locale=en_GB; X: @AnnandaleDstlryIf you can, support the podcast and blogs by becoming a £3 monthly subscriber, and unlock lots of premium content, including bonus blog posts and recipes, access to the easter eggs and the secret podcast, or treat me to a one-off virtual pint or coffee: click here. This episode was mixed and engineered by Thomas Ntinas of the Delicious Legacy podcast. Things mentioned in today’s episodeArticle: <a…
Those listening to the secret podcast can hear 15 minutes of extra material including flummery, mutton, laverbread sauce, the traditional skills in the collective cultural memory of the Welsh, the etymology of rarebit/rabbit plus more!
Remember: Fruit Pig are sponsoring the 9th season of the podcast, and Grant and Matthew are very kindly giving listeners to the podcast a unique special offer 10% off your order until the end of October 2025 – use the offer code Foodhis in the checkout at their online shop, www.fruitpig.co.uk.
If you can, support the podcast and blogs by becoming a £3 monthly subscriber, and unlock lots of premium content, including bonus blog posts and recipes, access to the easter eggs and the secret podcast, or treat me to a one-off virtual pint or coffee: click here.
Don’t forget, there will be postbag episodes in the future, so if you have any questions or queries about today’s episode, or indeed any episode, or have a question about the history of British food please email me at neil@britishfoodhistory.com, or on twitter and BlueSky @neilbuttery, or Instagram and Threads dr_neil_buttery. My DMs are open.
My guest on The British Food History Podcast today is historian Mark Truesdale, scholar of the fifteenth-century King and Commoner tradition and its early modern afterlife and author of The King and Commoner Tradition: Carnivalesque Politics in Medieval and Early Modern Literature, published by Routledge.
We talk about medieval carnival, the plot of a king and commoner tale, spying foresters, rude monks, the love of eating tiny birds, who the audience might be, and the ridiculousness of baking a venison pasty in Sherwood Forest – amongst many other things.
The British Food History Podcast is available on all podcast apps, YouTube, and can be streamed here via this Spotify embed:
A selection of illustrations from manuscripts of various king & commoner tales
Those listening to the secret podcast can hear about Henry VIII’s love of Robin Hood tales, cowardly herons, and Mark tells me who the king in these tales may (or may not) be referring to.
Remember: Fruit Pig are sponsoring the 9th season of the podcast, and Grant and Matthew are very kindly giving listeners to the podcast a unique special offer 10% off your order until the end of October 2025 – use the offer code Foodhis in the checkout at their online shop, www.fruitpig.co.uk.
If you can, support the podcast and blogs by becoming a £3 monthly subscriber, and unlock lots of premium content, including bonus blog posts and recipes, access to the easter eggs and the secret podcast, or treat me to a one-off virtual pint or coffee: click here.
Don’t forget, there will be postbag episodes in the future, so if you have any questions or queries about today’s episode, or indeed any episode, or have a question about the history of British food please email me at neil@britishfoodhistory.com, or leave a comment, below.
Hello everyone – I do hope you are all having a great weekend.
This is just a super-short post just to remind you that the first Serve it Forth Food History Festival is just one week away – it’s online and on Saturday 18 October!
If you want to get hold of a ticket, visit the Eventbrite page, but remember to use the offer code SERVE25 at the checkout to get 25% off the ticket price.
So, come and join my and my cohosts – Sam Bilton, Thomas Ntinas and Alessandra Pino for an educational and fun day with guests such as Tudor food expert and author Brigitte Webster and food writer, journalist and author Tom Parker Bowles. Check out the full Bill of Fare here.
If you didn’t catch it, here’s a podcast episode we made to let you know more about the day, but also to get to know us all a little better.
In today’s episode of The British Food History Podcast, I speak with Peter Brears, a world-leading food historian. He was director of both York and Leeds City Museums, and is a consultant to the National Trust, English Heritage and Historic Royal Palaces.
He is the winner of the André Simon award for his book, Cooking and Dining in Medieval England, published in 2012, which is a must-have, as are his other books in the series that focus on upper-class cooking and dining in the Tudor and Early Stuart periods, and most recently in the Victorian country house.
He is also a founding member of the Leeds Symposium of Food History and Traditions, which will have its 40th next year.
Our conversation was recorded in person at his home in Leeds.
We talk about the roles of the housekeeper and butler first in the Victorian period, but then trace their histories back right to the Middle Ages in the case of the butler. Also covered: orchestrating big meals, the drinks prepared by the butler, the mysteries of the stillroom, and the pressures of preparing a baked Alaska – amongst many other things.
The podcast is available on all podcast apps and YouTube. You can also stream it via this Spotify embed:
Those listening to the secret podcast can hear about French and Russian service, when housekeepers are definitely not subservient, the dos and don’ts of displaying porcelain and the contents of the housekeeper’s cupboard.
Remember: Fruit Pig are sponsoring the 9th season of the podcast, and Grant and Matthew are very kindly giving listeners to the podcast a unique special offer 10% off your order until the end of October 2025 – use the offer code Foodhis in the checkout at their online shop, www.fruitpig.co.uk.
If you can, support the podcast and blogs by becoming a £3 monthly subscriber, and unlock lots of premium content, including bonus blog posts and recipes, access to the easter eggs and the secret podcast, or treat me to a one-off virtual pint or coffee: click here.
Don’t forget, there will be postbag episodes in the future, so if you have any questions or queries about today’s episode, or indeed any episode, or have a question about the history of British food please email me at neil@britishfoodhistory.com, or on twitter and BlueSky @neilbuttery, or Instagram and Threads dr_neil_buttery. My DMs are open.
In this episode of the podcast, I talk with ceramics expert Paul Crane FSA about the early years of Worcester porcelain. Paul is a consultant at the Brian Haughton Gallery, St James’s, London, and a specialist in Ceramics from the Medieval and Renaissance periods through to the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. He presently sits as a Trustee of the Museum of Royal Worcester and is also a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, an independent historian and researcher and a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Art Scholars.
Our conversation was recorded in person at the Museum of Royal Worcester. If you want to see the pieces we discuss, check out this post where I’ve added images of the majority of the items discussed or go to the YouTube channel where I’ve lined up the images with our discussion. Paul and I really do our best to describe the pieces, but of course, it’s best if you can see them for yourself.
The images used are a mixture of my own and those taken from the Museum of Royal Worcester archives. Thank you to the museum for the permission to use them.
The podcast is available on all podcast apps, just search for “The British Food History Podcast”, or stream on this Spotify via this embed:
Alternatively, watch this episode on YouTube to see the images below matched up with the sound.
We talk about Dr Wall and how he got the Worcester manufactory up and running, the importance of seeing porcelain by candlelight, asparagus servers, the first piece of porcelain you see when you walk into the museum, the Royal Lily service and how Worcester porcelain attained the Royal warrant, amongst any other things.
Those listening to the secret podcast can hear more about the early blue and white pieces, including a rare bleeding bowl, the first commemorative coronation porcelain mug and the stunning Nelson tea service, plus much more.
Dr John Wall (1708-1776)Some examples of the early blue and white porcelain.The first piece of porcelain you see when you enter the museum: the beautiful Wigornia cream boat; the ‘Wigornia’ mark; the first image of the Worcester porcelain manufactory from The Gentleman’s Magazine.
The ‘smoky primitives’ that Paul mentions that attempt to emulate the feel of silverware sparkling in the candlelight.
Two of the more frivolous items: the asparagus server and grape cart.The ‘Dr Wall’s Dinner’ display at the museum with the excellent food made by Kelly Samantha Bowes at the Fake Food Workshop – notice the asparagus server in use!The dessert course case at the museum and that ice pail containing the painted inner bowl that so excited Ivan Day!Two of the pieces from Paul’s own curated case that focuses upon the work of James Giles, plus two illustrations from the book that inspired most of the Giles art called The Natural History of Uncommon BirdsThe Duke of Gloucester tureens and service and the Royal Lily set that got Worcester Porcelain its Royal Warrant.Some of the pieces discussed in the secret podcast version of the discussion: a bleeding bowl (1754), the Wall Mug (1754) and the Nelson Tea Service (1802)
Remember: Fruit Pig are sponsoring the 9th season of the podcast, and Grant and Matthew are very kindly giving listeners to the podcast a unique special offer 10% off your order until the end of October 2025 – use the offer code Foodhis in the checkout at their online shop, www.fruitpig.co.uk.
If you can, support the podcast and blogs by becoming a £3 monthly subscriber, and unlock lots of premium content, including bonus blog posts and recipes, access to the easter eggs and the secret podcast, or treat me to a one-off virtual pint or coffee: click here.
Don’t forget, there will be postbag episodes in the future, so if you have any questions or queries about today’s episode, or indeed any episode, or have a question about the history of British food, please email me at neil@britishfoodhistory.com, or leave a comment below.
British Food: A History 