I am not a natural born historian. My historical understanding is blurred with sentiment and my specialisms are limited to feasting, fasting (and a little crusading). I’m really just a natural born glutton with a History degree.
At the moment I’m reading Home Cooking by the late Laurie Colwin. It’s possibly one of the best things I’ve ever read and I keep on finding myself missing tube stops because of engrossing musings on soup and cornbread stuffing. She starts the collection of essays with this thought:
“No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.”
This one quote has assured me that blending food with history and history with taste, is okay. It’s natural.
After all, the kitchen, in being the one space where human senses are given complete priority, is a place of historic comfort. The cook has always been guided by instinct with the objective of nourishment and pleasure. There are few things that feel so human.
Laurie Colwin has encouraged me to push my blog in a different direction. I want to talk about the things that have always made us – as a food loving people – happy. Things like sticky ginger cake on a damp afternoon, or eating fish and chips in a steamy car.
After all, recipes are historical artefacts in themselves: they simply follow the wisdom of cooks and gluttons past.
To The Table 