Eating for England
The Delights and Eccentricities of the British at Table
Nigel Slater
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2007
Copyright © Nigel Slater 2007
Nigel Slater asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Some Photographs were unavailable for the electronic edition.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780007199471
Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780007370047
Version: 2016-09-22
For D and P and in memory of M
Contents
Copyright
Preface
In a Stew
Harvest Festival
The Lunchbox
Toblerone
The Kitchen Fusspot
Black Pudding
Cake Forks and Sticky Fingers
Shopping on the Internet – Couch Potatoes
The Biscuit Tin
The Digestive
Bread and Butter Pudding
Eating Soldiers
Lunch on a Bench
Combating that Sinking Feeling
The Coffee Percolator
Faggots and Gravy
The Naked Cook
Murray Mints
The Farmers’ Market – An Allotment for Wimps
Rhubarb and Custard
Fruit and Nut
The Setting of Jam
Oxo Cubes
Feeding the Elderly
Custard
A Custard
The Economical Cook
The Voucher Queen
A Cake Walk through Britain
The Gingerbread Wars
Shopping for Meat
Toast – The Story of a Nation’s Hunger
Frogspawn and Nosebleeds
Stirring Jam into Your Rice Pudding – Or Not
The Nut Cutlet
A Child in the Restaurant – 1964
Toffees
The Midnight Feast
Jacob’s Club
Rubbernecking – The Lost Art of Celebrity-Spotting
The Wind in Your Face, a Fish in Your Bag
Summer Cooking
The Jaffa Cake
The Village Shop – The Font of All Knowledge and Fairy Soap
Tripe and Onions
Aga Toast
The Chocolate Digestive
The Rich Tea
Fudge
Ribena
Filling Your Bag
Old English Spangles
Fry’s Five Centres
Making Coffee
Breakfast
The Chocolate Bar – A Curiously British Obsession
‘My Name is Carol and I am a Chocoholic’
Your Life in Your Hands
Chopsticks at Dawn
Heinz Tomato Ketchup
Kia Ora
Tipping, as Only the Brits Know How
Jelly Babies
This Little Piggy
The Tight-Arse Cook
Washing Up
Mashed Swede
Ginger Cake
Cream Sponge
Eating in the Street – ‘I’ll Have That with Wings’
Throwing a Coffee Morning
The Cadbury’s Flake
A Teenager at the Table
Scones and the Sultana Problem
Bourbon Biscuits
Dairylea
Custard Creams
Modern Shopping