The home of hungry readers
‘Gordon,’ she said, ‘a cake.’
He shook his head and said softly, as if soothing her, ‘Oh, no, no.’
‘Yes, Gordon. It is full of goodness.’ And she made him eat a Chester cake…
(Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie)
If you’re anything like me, then the idea of being ‘forced’ to eat cake – with the justification that ‘it is full of goodness’- is a very appealing one! In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie that is exactly what happens. Continue reading “Force feeding”
The June day spread itself round Maythorpe Hall, endless, amorphous, ominous. It had no shape – not even a dinner hour, for Elsie was baking and had given Midge ham cake and apples to eat whenever she felt like it, and those had disappeared hours and hours ago. (Winifred Holtby, South Riding)
One thing I hadn’t expected when I started this blog was how many new foods and dishes I would come across in my survey of English literature over time. Continue reading “New Adventures in Food”
‘Everybody was mad with excitement. William was coming on Christmas Eve. Mrs Morel surveyed the pantry. There was a big plum cake, and a rice cake, jam tarts, lemon tarts, and mince pies – two enormous dishes. She was finishing cooking – Spanish tarts and cheese-cakes.’ (D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers) Continue reading “Coming home for Christmas”
‘What happened to you?’ Maurice said to Ursula one afternoon as he sprawled on a deckchair on the lawn reading Punch, cramming nearly an entire slice of Mrs Glover’s marmalade cake into his mouth at once.
‘What do you mean what happened to me?’
‘You’ve turned into a heifer.’ (May 1926, page 230)
In these posts on food in Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, Mrs Glover’s cooking has been presented as often falling short of expectations. Her Sole Veronique – discussed here – is described as a ‘surprisingly capricious interpretation‘ of the classic French dish whilst her Veal cutlets a la Russe – from my last post – are dismissed as ‘unappetizing‘ and ‘like the dog’s dinner‘. Clearly sophisticated continental cooking is not her forte. Continue reading “Life after Life 7: Marmalade Cake”