Stuck for an idea of what to make for that important dinner party? Then leave Delia and Nigella on the bookshelf and reach for… Jane Austen
Food for thought: Pen Vogler has collected dozens of meal ideas inspired by Austen
The pages of her romantic novels set among the landed gentry in the early 19th century may seem an unlikely source of culinary inspiration but if you look closely enough they contain plenty of delicious ideas, says author Pen Vogler.
She has collected dozens of meal ideas inspired by Austen after re-reading her novels and letters, researching how the Regency delights might have been made in cookbooks of the age then updating them for modern kitchens - as nowadays few people know what ‘a peck of flour’ or ‘one spoonful of good barm’ is.
The dishes unearthed by Vogler include something for nearly every occasion: from partridges with bread sauce and a marzipan ‘hedgehog’ for a dinner party to impress, to a ‘hen’s nest’ to celebrate, and cherries en chemise to soothe a friend’s broken heart.
Vogler, a speaker at the Daily Mail Chalke Valley History Festival today, says such treats from 200 years ago provides a delicious alternative to today’s usual dinner party fare and highlight ‘the sense of fun in food that the Georgians had’.
The ‘hedgehog’, for example, may sound and look like something we would make for a child’s birthday party nowadays but in Austen’s time it would have been made to amuse adult guests at a sophisticated soiree. The ‘hen’s nest’ is egg-shaped jellies with candied lemon zest strips for the ‘straw’ which would brighten up any table.
Vogler, who has written a book on the subject called ‘Dinner With Mr Darcy’, admits there were some unusual flavour combinations back then. Oysters and anchovies were often used to intensify the flavour of mutton, which was the most commonly eaten meat in Georgian times.
But her suggested recipes avoid what she calls the more ‘scary’ dishes of that age - like calf’s heads which were ‘delicacies for the Georgians but are the stuff of health and safety nightmares for us.’
She also highlights how Austen’s novels show the important role food played in comfortable society in Georgian England at the very point in time when middle class dinner parties started, as well as revealing the social mores of that age.
‘Mrs Bennet in Pride and Prejudice is perhaps the most obvious example with her very clear idea of what a dinner party should be like,’ Vogler explained yesterday. ‘Hers is nice, proper English food made by English cooks and like many country folk then she is suspicious of the new fancy French cooking.
‘Austen makes Mrs Bennet a rather laughable character, almost like a contender for Come Dine With Me, but her obsession with status and one-upmanship sums up the key issues for a hostess of that time.’
Vogler highlights how Austen's novels show the important role food played in comfortable society in Georgian England
To illustrate this, Vogler points to how Austen shows social-climbing Mrs Bennet’s boasting about the success of a dinner party she has thrown: ‘The venison was roasted to a turn - and everybody said they never saw so fat a haunch. The soup was fifty times better than what we had at the Lucas's last week; and even Mr Darcy acknowledged that the partridges were remarkably well done; and I suppose he has two or three French cooks at least.’
By contrast, Vogler notes that Austen’s willowy heroines, the characters we care most about, are seldom interested in food. In fact, Austen tends to be ‘very rude’ about people who are interested in food in her novels - especially men.
‘If you were a man you shouldn’t be getting involved in the domestic sphere of house-keeping,’ said Vogler, who works in publishing at Penguin.
‘Greedy Mr Grant in Mansfield Park complains about the goose being too ‘green’, as in young, and the pheasant being too tough. He gets his comeuppance though as Austen kills him off from ‘apoplexy’ after ‘three great institutionary dinners in one week’.’
Despite the apparently ‘unfoodie’ stance she displays in her novels. Austen herself displayed a keen interest in planning and eating food in letters she wrote as a young woman. But later in life as her writing career flourished, the novelist said: ‘Composition seems to me impossible with a head full of joints of mutton and doses of rhubarb.’
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