Introduction

Taste and smell are potent in their ability to evoke faces and places, times and events. Looking back to my childhood on a farm, I can instantly lecall the waft of bacon frying, the aroma of roasting beef, the gamey scent of partridge in the oven, the smell of warm straw as I gathered eggs and the tang of blackberries as I plucked them, purple-fingered, from the hedgerows. The North Yorkshire Moors was an idyllic place to live and loam about nature’s larder: seafood from the North Sea, Jamb, beef and pork reared by people with pride in their produce, game from the rough shoots alongside the Esk Valley and especially grouse from the purple-cloaked moors of Egton, Rosedale and Danbydale. Without ever being conscious of it, the food you were eating was teaching you about the seasons.