The theme of this blog hop is historical food and so I thought it would be fun to look at trivia associated with some traditional, English regional dishes.
Black Pudding and the Wars of the Roses
As a vegetarian of twenty-five years, I'm bemused to admit that as a child, black pudding was a favourite treat! For the uninitiated, the main ingredient is blood (which gives the black colouration) mixed with a filler to make it solid enough to form into a sausage. In past centuries it was considered a delicacy, especially in Lancashire .
Indeed, the Lancastrian towns of Bury and Ramsbottom still host 'The World Black Pudding Throwing Championships'. The aim is to throw six-ounce black puddings at a pile of Yorkshire puddings sitting on a 20-foot plinth. This tradition is said to go back to the Wars of the Roses when opposing soldiers ran out of ammunition and threw food at one another.
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| Black pudding |
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| The Black Pudding Throwing Championship |
Roast Beef and Beefeaters
When mighty Roast Beef was the Englishman's food,
It ennobled our brains and enriched our blood
Out soldiers were brave and our courtiers were good
Oh! The Roast Beef of old England
And old English Roast Beef!
Henry Fielding, 1731, The Grub Street Opera
Roast beef and the English have become synonymous, and is the reason the French disparagingly call us 'rosbifs'. In Shakespeare's 'Henry V' on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt, the French trembled facing the English because:
"…great meals of beef and iron and steel, they will eat like wolves and fight like devils".
Such was the reputation of beef that King James I gave his royal bodyguard, the Yeoman of the Guard, extra rations and hence they became known as 'beefeaters'.
Cornish Pasties and the Devil
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| A Yeoman of the Guard, or beefeater - at the Tower of London |
A pasty is an old English term for a pie baked not in a dish. The traditional pasty was a portable meal for tin miners, with a thick pastry edge to hold the pie by, keeping dirty fingers away from the food. The filling would be beef, potato, onion and swede or turnip, and some had a fruit filling at the other end - a sort of two course meal.
According to a Cornish saying, the Devil took care to stay on the Devon bank of the River Tamar [dividing the counties] in case he ended up diced in a pasty. .jpg) |
| A Cornish pasty |
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| The River Tamar |
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AND THE WINNER IS DEBBY- congratulations Debby, your ebooks are in the mail.
Blogs participating in this hop:
AND THE WINNER IS DEBBY- congratulations Debby, your ebooks are in the mail.
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| Coming soon! |
- Random Bits of Fascination (Maria Grace)
- Pillings Writing Corner (David Pilling)
- Anna Belfrage
- Debra Brown
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