Cucumber Soup

Large houses like Downton relied upon their kitchen gardens to supply most of their fruit and vegetable requirements. With enough money, almost anything could be produced, and in the Victorian era, the rich prided themselves on eating out-of-season produce, forced or retarded through skillful garden management. By the twentieth century, as land rents fell and many aristocrats struggled to maintain their estates, the acres of greenhouses were increasingly left to rot, and the boilers that ha