Description

Peter Brears is one of the UK's most foremost food historians and authorities on domestic artifacts, historical kitchens and cooking technology who in this book turns his attention to the culinary traditions of the working classes in England's largest county. This is a book for serious students and covers the period 1800-1920, during which time the life - very much including diet - of working people in Yorkshire was transformed by the industrial revolution. It opens with a survey of the various economic and social groups in the county, progresses to a study of cooking, fuel and installations, then concentrates in a series of single subject chapters on staple foods - porridge, oatcake, bread, meat, fish, puddings, and cakes. There then follow chapters on dairy products and drinks, and it closes with a folkloric survey of feats, fairs and calendar customers, and rites of passage such as head-washings, weddings and funerals. There are two appendices describing and supplying information about the contents of weavers' and miners' cottages.