On Thu, 23 Jan 2014 21:25:23 -0000, Ian Sage <sage_gen@tiscali.co.uk> wrote: > By chance recently, I stumbled across the poem "Leady-Day, an' Ridden > House" by William Barnes which gives a quite detailed inventory of the > household of a labouring man. > Do others on list have favourite, less conventional sources of > background on our ancestors' way of life? Hi Ian and Listers, One of my favourite sources is 'A Taste of the West Country in Food and Pictures' by Theodora Fitzgibbon, which was published by J.M. Dent & Sons in 1972. I've written about this book before, some years ago, but it may be worth mentioning it again as it may be of interest to anyone who hasn't heard of it. The recipes are accompanied by old photographs of people and places in the West Country. The old photographs include some taken at Wells, Clifton, Bristol, Cheddar, Bath, Dunster and Weston-super-Mare. There's a recipe for Madeira cake which was originally made to accompany Madeira wine, and another for Somerset Apple Cake. Also included are recipes for Sally Lunn Cakes and Bath Buns. Particularly interesting is the page on Mendip Snails or Wallfish as they are known locally. I also like the section on Elvers where there's reference to Keynsham being famous for Elver Cakes. There's also mention of Cheese Straws, a feature of Cheddar, and the famous Bath Chap. I was thinking of Bath Chaps, the salted and smoked cheeks of a pig, only yesterday, when I saw some Pigs' Ears for sale at a £1 each in a butcher's shop. I didn't buy any, but I wondered how to cook them and whether my ancestors would have been familiar with this delicacy. Of course, later I was able to find recipes on the internet for cooking Pigs' Ears, but in past times recipes for cooking them would have been handed down from generation to generation. Josephine

On 24/01/2014 11:10, Josephine Jeremiah wrote: > One of my favourite sources is 'A Taste of the West Country in Food and > Pictures' by Theodora Fitzgibbon, which was published by J.M. Dent & Sons > in 1972.... > > Particularly interesting is the page on Mendip Snails or Wallfish as they > are known locally. I also like the section on Elvers where there's > reference to Keynsham being famous for Elver Cakes. There's also mention > of Cheese Straws, a feature of Cheddar, and the famous Bath Chap. Thanks for that reference to "A Taste of the West Country", Josephine. Food was certainly a central part of our ancestors' lives and regional fare tells us a lot about living conditions and locally available ingredients. I am not sure how my family would take to Wallfish, but we certainly used to enjoy Bath chaps as an inexpensive delicacy when we could get them some 35 years back. But your mention of Cheddar and its cheese reminds me of another great source - Daniel Defoe's "A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain" (1724-6). He describes how the milk from the whole area of Cheddar was brought together and accounted for to each farmer, then made at each milking into a single cheese whose size varied according to the season - "By this method the goodness of the cheese is preserved and, without all dispute, is the best cheese that England affords, if not, that the whole world affords." He makes many observations about Somerset and the country around the Mendips - including, topically, the impassability of the low road from Bridgewater to Bristol during inundations, and the damage wrought by the recent storm of 1703. Ian