Life after Life 5: Almond Choc-Chip Cake

They were eating cake, almond speckled with chopped-up pieces of chocolate, an old recipe of Mrs Glover’s handed down on a piece of paper that was covered in greasy fingerprints. (2 September 1939, page 303)

One of the things I like so much about cooking is the idea of food as a legacy, as something that is passed down through the generations over time. And of course the way in which that manifests itself is through recipes – through writing down how to make something to eat, the joy and pleasure of food can be transmitted from person to person, from age to age.   Continue reading “Life after Life 5: Almond Choc-Chip Cake”

The Hungry Child

As we move into the 19th century, novels begin to take more of an interest in childhood. Whilst Jane Austen touches on the childhood of some of her protagonists (Emma Woodhouse, Catherine Morland and Fanny Price), novelists writing slightly later develop the childhood of their protagonists as a key element in their plots. Such writers include Charlotte Bronte in Jane Eyre (1847), and Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist (1837), David Copperfield (1850) and Great Expectations (1860).  Continue reading “The Hungry Child”

Food and Social Status

From the groaning tables of King Arthur’s court in the fourteenth century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight through to Mrs Portman’s pea soup in Thackeray’s short story, “A Little Dinner at Timmins” , food has been used by writers as an indicator of wealth and social status.   Continue reading “Food and Social Status”