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(More customer reviews)Victorian England may have started a downward trend in culinary preferences, (lasting well into the twentieth century) but one would never know it after reading Kate Colquhoun's fact-filled new book, "Taste", a compilation of everything digestible from the Middle Ages onward. Colquhoun will have the reader scrambling for his or her dictionary at almost every turn of the page as she sorts out the foodstuffs, cooking, dining and their historical analogies. It's an exhaustive and compelling offering.
The author is consistent in her reminders that in earlier centuries the Brits were really onto something in terms of what they ate. The Tudors and the Stuarts were no slacks when it came to fine dining...indeed they gave gluttony its headstart. But the masses, too, enjoyed a growing identity with their own comestibles as Britain lurched between rulers and conquests. The French make more than a cameo appearance throughout "Taste", much to the liking or the chagrin of their Channel counterparts. (depending on the season, so to speak) Colquhoun is very good at connecting the dots of history and food and she brightens the chapters by telling us how certain phrases like "done to a turn" or "making ends meet" actually came out of kitchen connections.
"Taste" often gets buried under its own encyclopaedic weight. There's almost too much information of every table listing... so much so that a certain somnolence becomes the reader. A heavier editing and a lighter narrative would have helped this book, but nonetheless, "Taste" is a welcome addition to a growing number of food histories. Colquhoun has researched her material thoroughly and that is very much to her credit. To that end, "Taste" is worth the read.
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