I remember visiting Kew Gardens in 1985 when the Huguenot Heritage Year was on. There was a display with information about the Huguenots introducing hops to England and also a lot of vegetables that had only been grown in France. also read that the Sally Lunn bun in Bath was invented (?) by a Huguenot. Shirley Subject: [HWE] Hugenotten > > Thanks to Hanne Thorup Koudal for explaining the Huguenot contribution > to the Danish diet. The Huguenots were more vegetarian than their hosts? > The refugees who went to the Cape of Good Hope seem to have been happy > with the local meat diet and I read somewhere that in England they had a > liking for oxtail soup - did they, perhaps, use more vegetables because > of their reduced circumstances?

Martin writes: > I read somewhere that in England they had a > liking for oxtail soup - did they, perhaps, use more vegetables because > of their reduced circumstances? I don't think it's a good idea to make assumptions about Huguenots' economic circumstances as a group -- they were after all of sufficient means, as a group, to field armies rivaling those of the king of France (who was, admittedly, almost always in 'reduced circumstances'), to send ambassadors to foreign courts for extended periods of time, to raise money to rent thousands of mercenary troops, etc. They fielded schemes for social relief, and -- if you believe historians contemporary with them -- always managed to fill the poor-box in the temples on Sunday. There has been a fair bit of historical work done on Huguenot lifestyle issues -- what they wore, what they ate, how they spent their not-so-copious leisure time. For example, Mentzer and Spicer's *Society and Culture in the Huguenot World, 1559-1685* is a great introduction to social historical issues associated with how this diverse group of people we persist in treating as a unitary body actually lived. (You can buy a copy from Amazon.com). Broad conclusions that can be drawn from that research include the following: - dietary preferences were a function of regional situation, not religious persuasion. Huguenots in the southern areas of what is today France ate very differently than those in the northern borderlands (today's northern France and Belgium). Beryond staples (bread, chees) which themselves varied widely based on regional resources-to-hand, root vegetables would be part and parcel of the diet of those regions where root vegetables were easily grown, and what constituted 'exotic' food varied widely as well -- seafood, for example, wasn't much eaten by Huguenots inland from the coast areas because of the lack of preservation facilities (other than drying and salting) and the cost of transportation. - dietary range was a function of economic means. Well-to-do-Huguenots ate substantially the same as well-to-do Catholics and well-to-do Lutherans, though there is significant anecodal evidence that well-to-do Huguenots liked to tweak the noses of their Catholic acquaintances by serving meat on days when Catholics were enjoined from its consumption. I've read fairly broadly (but perhaps not well) in the literature of the time and can't recall any dietary dicta that came out of the various synods or pulpits, though the Huguenot divines did have a need to regulate nearly every aspect of the Huguenot lifestyle so I wouldn't be surprised to find there were some...