French travel writer Pierre-Jean Grosley toured Georgian London just in time to witness a culinary revolution: the sandwich.
In 1770, Frenchman Pierre-Jean Grosley delighted French readers with his account of a visit to London and of the habits of its citizens high and low. Two years later, Thomas Nugent translated it, and Grosley’s impressions found an equally delighted audience on this side of the Channel. It is to this work that we are indebted for an eyewitness account of the ‘sandwich’ and its ... spread.
It was during the troubled reign of Charles I that the very first bananas seen in Britain went on display.
The runaway success of Alicia Amherst’s History of Gardening in England (1895) surprised nobody more than its modest author. Plenty of horticultural manuals offered practical advice but Amherst and her contemporary Gertrude Jekyll helped put gardening into its wider social context. In this passage, she records the first appearance of a much-loved fruit but also gives us a glimpse of a courageous man.
In the days of King James I, Thomas Coryat visited Italy and came home with an affected Continental habit: eating with a fork.
When Peter Damian, Bishop of Ostia, learnt that the late Maria Argyropoulaina (?-1007), daughter-in-law to the Doge of Venice, had eaten with a little fork rather than her fingers, he denounced it as unnatural. But on a tour of Italy in 1608, Englishman Thomas Coryat found that forks were now everyday items, and he even brought the fashion back home.
Archdeacon and diplomat Peter of Blois was a frequent guest at the laden tables of King Henry II, but he had little appetite for the fare on offer.
Hollywood has made us familiar with the image of medieval kings at table with their nobles, the tables groaning under the weight of platters of venison and flagons of wine, and everyone rejoicing in plenty. What Hollywood does not tell us, but Henry II’s courtier Peter of Blois (?1130-?1211) does, is that most of it was well past its sell-by date.
Alfred Bird’s wife could eat neither eggs nor yeast. So being a Victorian, Alfred put his thinking-cap on.
Alfred Bird (1811-1878), a Birmingham pharmacist, did not invent egg-free custard powder to make a fortune (though he did), or because dietitians disapproved of eggs. He did it so he could enjoy eating pudding with his wife.