Abstract
To celebrate the coronation of George II, which took place on 11 October 1727, three loyal tables in Westminster Hall groaned beneath the accumulated weight of seventy-five different dishes, thirty of which were replaced with yet more food as the repast continued, so that 105 different taste sensations were available in one place. With platters crowding the tables, some piled on top of others to give the image of food rising along the middle of each table, everything was calculated to please the palates, the eyes and the appetites of hundreds of guests. Each table contained a characteristic combination of savouries and sweets. ‘Leeches’ (chequered jellies) nestled against collared veal, geese à la daube, crabs, cheesecakes, bombards and fricandos, venison pasties, polonia sausage, and numerous plates marked ‘Sweetmeats’ and ‘Fruit’, with four ‘grand pyramids’ of sweetmeats every few feet along the length of each table, and one especially grand grand pyramid ‘of Wet & Dry Sweetmeats’ in the very centre. No fewer than fifty separate plates of garnish were provided on each table to set off the opulence of the main attraction. The banquet lasted for three days, as it would have had to, if every guest were to taste, just taste, a sample of each dish.
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Bibliography
The enjoyment of food is a notoriously transient pleasure, so perhaps it is to be expected that there is relatively little scholarly work on food history, less still on the pleasure attached to food in eighteenth-century Europe. Probably the best single source for consistent exploration of the history of food and cooking all over the world is Petits propos culinaires, a journal that has just passed its first half-century of issues, whose high quality belies its modest appearance. The best scholarly treatment of food history in France is Barbara Wheaton’s Savoring the Past (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983)
which takes the subject up to the French Revolution; the best overall account of food history in England is Sir Jack Drummond’s classic, The Englishman’s Foody revised edn (London: Pimlico, 1991).
Stephen Mennell, All Manners of Food (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985)
is another useful survey, covering both sides of the English Channel. More general still, but always interesting, is Reay Tannahill, Food in History (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973, reprinted 1991).
Several famous cookery books first published in the eighteenth century have been reprinted in facsimile, including a late edition of Hannah Glasse, Art of Cookery and John Farley’s compendium of plagiarisms, The London Art of Cookery. Alice and Frank Prochaska have given Margaretta Acworth’s cookery manuscript the kind of scholarly treatment it deserves, though it is typical of hundreds of such manuscripts, many of which survive as family heirlooms. Maggie Black’s Jane Austen Cookbook (London: British Museum, 1995) is not quite what it seems, because it is a rehash of Martha Lloyd’s manuscript (which Austen knew) with a few period additions; but it still adds up to a handy guide through the eating preferences of a fairly ordinary household at the end of the eighteenth century.
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© 1996 Simon Varey
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Varey, S. (1996). The Pleasures of the Table. In: Porter, R., Roberts, M.M. (eds) Pleasure in the Eighteenth Century. Themes in Focus. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24962-6_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24962-6_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-62977-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-24962-6
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