Lady&Mister Chef
© 2013 Cristian Lucisano Editore Lady&Mister Chef
Reading - Section 2
The Most Common British Courses in Past Centuries
1000/1100
On the people’s tables, the everyday course was pottage, a thick stew made from dried pulses, herbs and oats. It was eaten with bread made with wheat, barley and rye. When eating, British people drank ale or the whey from cheese- making. In the same period, monasteries kept the pleasure of eating olives, cooking also meat and fish with herbs. Their predilection for meat was favoured by the wonderful wide pastures surrounding monasteries.
1100/1200
Rivers were full of salmons and trouts; forests had hares, wild boars, red deers and lots of game birds. As a consequence of the new born herring industry, the peasant’s table saw this new nourishing food. Fish from the Northern Sea entered the country thanks to navigable rivers, and seasoned with sweet and sour sauces reached the tables of the nobility together with game.
1200/1300
Roast meat is served with imaginative sauces, such as: ginger and garlic with goose; ginger sauce with lamb and pheasant. Heron and bustard were offered on a ground of currants, walnuts and cinnamon. Fish was served with a green sauce made with parsley, mint, garlic, thyme and sage.
1300/1400
In 1394 king Richard II wrote a cookery book
“The Forme of Cury” showing the great range of ingredients and innovation in the “cuisine”. In the meantime, wine was imported from France, sugar from North Africa; ale and cider were produced in England. Vegetables and herbs were grown and used for cooking. Pasta and rice dishes began to be popular.
1400/1500
A kind of early fast food was born thanks to the Norman habit to eat a kind of sandwich made with 2 wafers with a slice of cheese or meat inside.
1500/1600
Street food was popular, especially small tarts and pasties. Soups and sauces were sticken by the addition of breadcrumbs which were also used as a foundation for sausages and stuffings.
1600/1700
Cooks began to make sausages out of capon, mutton, rabbit and oyster. The pudding made its first appearance all over the country and on the tables of poor and rich people. Hot houses were built in order to grow pineapples; coffee houses and ice houses built on the country estate created new fashions and new tastes.
1700/1800
The first women cooks obtained a real professional success publishing autobiographic books about housekeeping and cooking. In the same years tea and chocolate became immensely popular, and potatoes were accepted as food, especially by the poor, in Scotland, Ireland and Northern England.
1800/1900
Preserved food of all kinds reached top levels.
Tomato ketchup made its first appearance.
Later in the century, thanks to the richness born from the Industrial Revolution, Britain became the largest importer of canned food (fruit from California). French “cuisine” influenced English cooking and gave to the simple British food new refined tastes and flavours.
1900/2000
The Mediterranean cuisine becomes famous in the world thanks to great cooks and literature. At the same time fast food, self-services and take away restaurants spread over the towns to satisfy the needs of working people.
