Fenland Food & Recipes

ALISON SLOAN now a teacher at the local Grammar School, gave members & quests a gastronomic delight for our May meeting.
She commenced her talk by telling us how she became obsessed with the history of food.
She gained her Masters in Social History with food being the predominant feature.
After having worked for various commercial companies she then became catering manager at National Trust properties & this lead her into investigating what people ate from Tudor times onwards . The NT properties at Oxburgh House King’s Lynn & Peckover House Wisbech had records of food produced & cooked & inventories of kitchen equipment.
Alison was not too impressed with the food offered to present day NT visitors so decided to research old recipes & reproduce them for the National Trust menu & this proved very successful.
Speaking of what was available from the local land & rivers Alison explained how, with imports of spices, wine & fruit & later molasses, food remained basic but nutritional, although it didn’t stop the working classes trying to eat as their lords & masters -an example quoted was that of fine white bread eaten by the lords, instead of the more wholesome whole grain bread which in poorer times was made of ground peas & beans.
Alison noted the meals taken by a Parson Woodford & that the amount of one of his daily three meals would be sufficient for several meals for us today, & although there were several courses the food was often meat & fish mixed with fruit & spices for each course.
The local well known farmer John Peck also made notes in his diary of food consumed & he noted that the potato which was originally thought only good enough for animal fodder in the mid 1800’s was being offered to humans in a baked form at the local fair & market which he thought ‘was very peculiar’
Alison continued her talk by making a trifle from a Peckover House recipe book which contained a good amount of brandy! The audience then had great pleasure in sampling this & many other dishes Alison had brought with her, these being herring & fruit pie, Fourses cake, lardy cake. Carroway cake, ginger bread, & Norfolk Vinegar cake.
To make the evening more special we were able to celebrate the 85th birthday of our member Bernard Amps, well known in the area for his knowledge of family history & research. He was presented with a card & birthday cake made by member Ann le Fort& he was seen having a good sample of the brandy trifle!
Something you probably didn’t know…
When the molasses barrels were emptied the poor people would scrape them out to get the remnants – hence the saying –scraping the bottom of the barrel !!
You learn something every day .. now what’s in the deep freezer for lunch!
[Barbara Holmes]