Introduction the Living Tradition of the True Cookery of England

Appears in
The Cookery of England
The Cookery of England

By Elisabeth Ayrton

Published 1975

  • About
War was declared between the English and the French over the matter of the fine art of good cooking long before the Middle Ages, and though by the nineteenth century the English were certainly the losers and themselves accepted the French as victors, the war still renews itself from time to time over the years.

‘. . . I suppose the Frenchmen never saw the like,’ said George Cavendish describing with obvious satisfaction in his Life of Cardinal Wolsey the marvellous ‘subtleties’ which decorated the second course of Wolsey’s great feast. He goes on to say that one of the subtleties, in the form of a chessboard, was given to a ‘gentleman of France’ to take home (rather as though he were a child at a birthday party) ‘because that Frenchmen be very expert in that play’.