Food in England: A Complete Guide to the Food That Makes Us Who We are

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Most important was the fire itself: "meat cooks well in this radiant heat and, contrary to general belief, there is far less waste by shrinkage. The latter sounds far-fetched, until Hartley explains how she used a dog churn once herself : a large wooden wheel on which the dogs ran, attached to a churn.

The book is a compendium of favourite tips and treats, many of which just happen to be several hundred years old . On a sadder note, this book also acts as a reminder of what we have lost due not only to population growth, industrialisation, and commercialisation; but also our innate lazy desire to spend less time (and money) in producing very high quality, and varied, fresh ingredients and finished dishes. Hartley's tone is generally calm and didactic; she waxes enthusiastic over certain flavors, and is strict about good and bad food preparation. Good-humoured, unpretentious and a bit eccentric, it's more like having a well-read friend than a subscription to a literary review. With Dorothy’s biographer, Adrian Bailey, I examined letters from a few years she spent travelling in Africa, and learned the tantalizing story of her great lost love, the heavy-drinking bush ranger whom she later said she should have married.

It is still alive in the pancakes we eat with lemons for Shrove Tuesday or the mincemeat and puddings of Christmas.

The Historic Royal Palaces curator Lucy Worsley presented a BBC film, 'Food in England', The Lost World of Dorothy Hartley, on 6 November 2015.Dorothy Hartley (1893-1985) travelled the country writing a weekly column on English country living for the Daily Sketch "for which she hunted out recipes, customs and folklore" (Worsley). This vessel might be used to cook a whole dinner, including a bacon joint, jars of poultry and multiple "bag puddings" of cereals and beans. It was an efficient way to cook, though Hartley warns that the pressure was sometimes too great, resulting in "demonic onslaughts" when the seal burst. It really does conjure up a whole lost world: not just because of the foods which have fallen out of favour, like mutton or parsnip wine, but because the recipes pre-date a whole raft of exotic ingredients like aubergine and yoghurt.