Sunday Lunch

Proper Sunday lunch is everything contemporary cooking is not. Meat-heavy, hostile to innovation, resolutely formalised, it is as much ritual as meal, and an almost extinct ritual at that. Contemporary trends, it is true, have hastened a reappraisal of traditional cooking. But neither nostalgia for nursery foods nor an interest in ponderous culinary Victoriana is what Sunday lunch – Sunday dinner – is all about. It doesn’t change, is impervious to considerations of health or fashion; it is about solidity, the family, the home.