English Cookery- a celebration and a tribute

English cookery has a long and proud history to rival the better-known French, yet much of it is now buried in obscurity. Just as we forsake our rich brewing tradition and venerate French wines instead, so it is with cookery: it seems to be part of the English penchant for self-deprecation! One of the earliest English cookery books is 'A Forme of Cury', compiled by Richard II's cook in early medieval times.

Influences upon some of the dishes could conceivably have gone back to Roman times; later on, a series of influential books:- Gervase Markham's "The English Hus-wife", published in 1615, The Queen's Closet Opened, published in 1655, Elizabeth Smith's The compleat Housewife, first published in 1727, and Mrs Rundle's A New System domestic Cookery, published in 1807, are classics in the field of true English cooking. Mrs Beeton is, of course, a household word, though some of her recipes were rather overblown versions of those in the earlier books. Apart from these, dozens of cookery books were published between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries which are almost unknown today; for English cooking has been in a self-imposed doldrums a long time, as we have surrendered to the French and forgotten much of our long culinary heritage.

Fortunately, there is some evidence that that is changing now, especially with a new generation of confident English cooks, and not just Delia Smith; many of them are male!

Notwithstanding this, the French have long been regarded as the natural superiors in gastronomy; by the eighteenth century English cooks had begun to be fearful of French domination. The great chef and Francois La Varenne published three cookery books while Louis XIV was still on the throne, and reform of French cooking made its mark after his death. By the early decades of the eighteenth the English nobility and gentry had begun to believe that French cooking was wholly superior to English. Some even sent their cooks to Paris to be taught, and others imported French chefs. It was not enough that Patrick Lamb, Queen Anne's cook, stood out against this practice and also claimed that English raw materials were the best in the world!

His was almost a lone voice, but there were others:- In the eighteenth century:- Parson Woodforde, that great eighteenth century English epicure, describing once an expensive and elaborate dinner, commented bitterly, 'Most of the things spoiled by being so Frenchified in the dressing,' the implication being that in this period many Englishmen felt undue reverence for French food. Mrs Glasse in The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, first published in 1747, confirms this: 'But if Gentlemen will have French Cooks, they must pay for French Tricks,' she says. '. .. So much is the blind Folly of this Age, that they would rather be imposed on by a French Booby, than give encouragement to a good English Cook!' And later, referring to pheasants 'A Frenchman would order Fish Sauce to them, but then you quite spoil your Pheasants!'

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