All Over England

Pastries and suet crusts, stocks, sauces and gravies have been made in much the same manner all over England from the Middle Ages to the present day, just as meat, game and poultry were roasted in the same manner wherever they were being prepared.

The making of stocks and the preparation of gravies today is much less extravagant and much less complicated than it was from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries when prime cuts of meat were boiled to rags for the resulting broth: others were half-cooked and their juice pressed out or, in some cases, pressed raw. The solids, deprived of juice and flavour, went to scullions and dogs.