‘Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch…’ (Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol) Continue reading “Twelfth Night Cake”
Tag: Twelfth Night
A Shakespeare Feast
Something a bit different this week. I thought – following the suggestion of a friend – that it would be a nice idea to get together a group of my friends who live locally and have been complimentary about my blog, and feed them. Thus, the Shakespeare Feast was designed.
Spicing it up
The history of ginger in English cookery and literature is similar to that of sugar – see here. Like sugar, ginger is not native to England; its origins lie in South Asia, and over time its cultivation spread to East Africa and the Caribbean. As with sugar, it is thanks to the Crusades that ginger was brought to the west. And like sugar, ginger was expensive – a pound of ginger was the same price as a sheep – though nowhere near as expensive as black pepper, which cost more by weight than gold. Used for medicinal and culinary purposes, including in wine, ginger was also commonly imported in a preserved form and made into sweets. Continue reading “Spicing it up”