Savouries

Those with a keen interest in affairs of the gut need no introduction to the savoury, that crowning glory of Victorian and Edwardian eating. It arrived in the gap between pudding and fruit. And in the words of Ambrose Heath, who devoted an entire tome, Good Savouries (1934), to the matter, they make ‘… an admirable ending to a meal, like some unexpected witticism or amusing epigram at the close of a pleasant conversation. It has the last word, as it were, before we turn to the frivolities of dessert.’