Tag: Dickens

Good Friday baking

The bun is somewhat spicy inside, and has a sugary glaze on the top, with a cross marked or stamped thereon. Whether it is eaten hot or cold, with butter or without, toasted or untoasted, each family decides according to circumstances; (Charles Dickens, Household Words, 1870)

Last Good Friday I posted about hot cross buns – their historical origins and references to them in popular culture and literature. However, I wasn’t organised enough to write the post until Good Friday, by which time it seemed a little late to give the recipe as anyone reading the blog would certainly have already consumed their hot cross buns.   Continue reading “Good Friday baking”

The Take-Away in Literature

It was a nice little dinner …being entirely furnished forth from the coffee-house 
(Great Expectations, Charles Dickens)

Until I visited Pompeii – during a holiday on the Amalfi coast a few years ago – I had always assumed take-aways were a recent invention.  But in the ancient Italian city devastated by the  volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD, the streets were lined with thermopolia, service counters opening onto the street where people could buy food to take away.  There were more than 200 of these in Pompeii, and the remains of houses show few traces of kitchen and dining areas, suggesting that cooking at home was unusual. Continue reading “The Take-Away in Literature”

Midnight Feasts

When we went upstairs to bed, [Steerforth] produced the whole seven shillings’ worth, and laid it out on my bed in the moonlight, saying: 
‘There you are, young Copperfield, and a royal spread you’ve got.’
                                                                             (Charles Dickens, David Copperfield)   Continue reading “Midnight Feasts”

Eating someone else’s food

When we had done, [the waiter] brought me a pudding, and having set it before me, seemed to ruminate, and to become absent in his mind for some moments.
‘How’s the pie?’ he said, rousing himself.
‘It’s a pudding’, I made answer. 
‘Pudding!’ he exclaimed.  ‘Why, bless me, so it is!  What!’ looking at it nearer.  ‘You don’t mean to say it’s a batter-pudding!’
‘Yes, it is indeed.’
‘Why, a batter-pudding,’ he said, taking up a table-spoon, ‘is my favourite pudding!  Ain’t that lucky?  Come on, little ‘un, and let’s see who’ll get most.’
The waiter certainly got most.  (David Copperfield, Charles Dickens)  Continue reading “Eating someone else’s food”