Dinner Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner

'Forget about the stories you've read in history books.

'Our food customs are our most direct connection

'to the world of the past.

'This is history that you can touch, smell and, above all, taste.'

It's lovely.

'The rituals of breakfast, lunch and dinner are something I think

'we take for granted,

as if they have always existed as they are now.'

I think I'd have preferred it fried.

You would have a heart attack by lunchtime.

'But unpick the stories of our three main meals

'and you discover gastronomic revolutions,

'technological leaps and, sometimes, gruesome realities.'

Decay is also going to cause really bad breath.

Yes, I think I've had boyfriends like that.

'I never miss a good meal but food is about more than just filling up.

'There's a rich and complex history to our daily meal times

'and that's what I'm setting out to explore.'

Right, dig in.

Master, My Lords, My Lady, aldermen,

ladies and gentlemen, dinner is served.

Please make your way into the great hall.

'I'm here at the Apothecaries Hall, where the great and the good

'of the medical profession are assembled to dine.

'Dinner in this form is our grandest and showiest meal.'

Hello, how do you do?

'The one we most associate with a sense of theatre and ritual.

'It's also the meal that most clearly signals

'how we position ourselves amongst our peers.

'I've come here to maintain a family tradition.

'My father was surgeon to the Royal household.

'Look at us in all our finery.'

I do love men in white ties.

'We're here to celebrate membership of a select club.'

Right, silence for grace by Clarissa Dickson Wright.

SHE GIVES A LATIN GRACE

'Even if you haven't been to an event like this,

'you'll no doubt recognise

'the performance aspects from dinner parties or family gatherings.

'There's a display of culinary prowess,

'a set series of courses,

'everyone's made an effort to scrub up, even me,

'and every male diner has a lady seated to his left and vice versa.

'The way we stage either a formal dinner or an informal dinner party

'is, in fact, a living microcosm of 1,000 years of dining

'whose rituals have evolved step by step.

'For a start, the concept of a head table is very medieval.

'We take our cutlery for granted,

'but that's evolved over the centuries.

'We're eating a delicious Chateaubriand,

'but our access to beef hasn't always been guaranteed.

'And set courses of food plated up in the kitchen

'is a relatively recent custom.

'But the biggest thing we take for granted is

'that it all takes place at night.

'There was a time when the conventional hour for dinner

'was very different.'

We normally think of dinner, the main meal of the day,

as eaten in the evening.

But historically, the timing has always been dictated

by the availability of light, and in the middle ages,

it was eaten in the middle of the day, when you had daylight.

'I want to travel back to the medieval period

'to examine one of the earliest forms of dinner.

'It's a fascinating mixture of customs that are both familiar

'and strange to us today.

'The time that we ate dinner is the first significant difference,

'but there are many more.

'I'm here at New College, Oxford, to meet food historian

'Sally Dickson Smith, who's going to elaborate

'on what a medieval dinner was actually like.'

So, New College dining hall in Oxford,

but probably very similar to any medieval hall.

Very similar. I mean, incredibly recognisable.

This kind of place... I mean, this is a very grand version,

but this kind of structure, from the Anglo-Saxon times

right up to the 19th century, really is at the centre of the household

and the place where everyone would come together and eat.

'People of all ranks ate communally, something I regret we've lost today.

'Also, in medieval times, and for centuries after,

'food was served differently, in a style called a la francais.

'Dozens of different dinner dishes, savoury and sweet

'would be set on the table at the same time in an enormous display.'

The way the service happens is that the people at the high table

are always served first. It really is about a pecking order

and demonstrating that pecking order. Who gets to eat what when.

'However, it wasn't all privilege at the high table.

'You might be served first

'but everyone ate under the eyes of a Catholic God.'

If you're at the high table, you have to wait until everyone

in the hall has been served before you start eating,

because it can indicate gluttony

and you wouldn't want to be seen to do that.

'And when everyone started eating, there was another difference.

'There was almost no cutlery.'

This is, of course, a time

when people were eating with their fingers.

They will have a knife. Knives were just part of everyday dress

and something that everyone would have on them.

-And you didn't eat off a plate.

-No, you didn't eat off a plate.

What you had was what's called a trencher,

which later does become a plate made out of wood,

but in the middle ages is a piece of bread.

'You might not recognise the plates,

'but some of the food would be very familiar.'

And you wouldn't be surprised to see a ravioli on your trencher.

No, you start getting ravioli from the 14th century.

It's something that people don't realise how far back it goes.

'And contrary to popular cliches,

'dining was not a raucous Neanderthal feeding frenzy,

'but an exercise in decorum and hygiene.'

There are very strict rules about what

you must and mustn't do at table,

but also things like everyone would come into the hall and would

wash their hands before the meal, and also after the meal.

This is very important, because though you would have a knife,

people don't have forks,

so you're sort of holding your food with your left hand.

'The food they ate was, by necessity,

either caught or grown locally,

'but that didn't stop them serving up a huge range of dishes.

'And when the main meal was over, there was dessert,

'which was then a medicinal course to aid digestion.

'It was known as the void

'and involved spiced wine, wafers and sugar coated seeds.

'The theatrical nature of this kind of dinner

'will always have an extra element,

'another course, if you like. The entertainment.'

THEY SING CHORAL MUSIC

'But the entertainment didn't come only courtesy of minstrels

'or the court jester.

'Medieval cooks were expected to deliver a feast for the eyes

as well as stomach and, if possible, throw in the odd joke as well.

'There's a fascinating book from the Middle Ages

'called Liber Cure Cocorum,

'which features a number of culinary practical jokes

'that play on a diner's expectations of their food.

'I've come to Cumbria to visit food historian, Ivan Day.

'He's going to prepare one of these recipes and show me

'what amusing tricks were served up at a medieval dinner.'

I'm sure you know this funny little book.

HE CHUCKLES

Well, actually, this little book was probably composed not very far

from where we're standing, because the middle English scholars

tell us it's written in a north western. So if you read it,

you've got to read it with a George Formby accent,

it's the only way to be.

I'll play the ukulele and you read it.

It's fascinating, because it's the only cookery book

that is written in rhyming couplets,

so I think it must have been designed to be learnt off by heart.

Well, that's what rhyming couplets were for, weren't they?

Exactly, and the recipe in Middle English is called

hasteletes on fysshe days,

which means fish you would only eat

on a day when you're not allowed to have meat.

What the dish consist of, usually, were entrails,

which you wrapped around the skewer.

This is a way of making a hastelete that doesn't have any meat in it.

But it's a joke with a very good ending,

because I think this is one of the most extraordinary dishes

in the history of British food.

You take the thread, the length of the mat.

It tells you take an almond

and what you've got to do is to put the needle through the almond.

Go like that, pull it onto the thread.

So, we take a piece of fig.

It's like a child threading beads.

It's just like a long, long necklace

like the hippies used to wear in the '60s, isn't it?

And that goes on there. Well, this is what the finished thing looks like.

Good Lord, look at that! Isn't that fun?

-It looks splendid, doesn't it?

-It looks amazing.

But it's what we do with it next which is the most wonderful thing.

What we've got to do with that is to attach it in a very cunning way,

which is a wonderful medieval word,

to wind it around the broach and this is how they did the entrails.

These chaps were expecting to see something that had got meat in it

and it hadn't, it had got fruit in it, which was kind of girly stuff,

really, for these testosterone drenched medieval huntsmen, you know.

And, of course, they couldn't eat meat on a fish day

because they had to follow the rules of the Church.

Or they'd go to hell.

Absolutely. So that's all finished, hastelete for a fish day.

If you look at the Bayeux Tapestry,

you will see men with things that look like this,

but what they are, they're probably the same thing,

but probably with intestines or some sort of kebab.

Yeah, that's right.

So if you would like to be the turn spit.

-I'll be the turn spit.

-And just make yourself comfortable.

I'm sure you've got a much grander throne there than most turn spits.

I'm going to put this batter, which is called an endoring batter,

cos it's the colour of gold, oro,

because it's got saffron in it.

And, of course, this mixture of spices

is very similar to ginger, which was a very popular spice.

The ginger means that it is actually a bit like gingerbread.

'You have to admire the ambition of medieval cooks.

'They had limited cooking apparatus

'but they could still devise a recipe for a sweet meat

'masquerading as roasted entrails

'by using an ingenious means of fire-side-baking.'

I've got to just work the spit out and then pull it right out like that.

And can you see what's happened?

Oh, yes. All the string's left behind.

Miraculously, all of the string is left behind.

-That's extraordinary.

-So, there is your hastelete.

It does really look like something that might be meat.

Yeah, a delightful surprise, really,

because it's probably one of the most unusual British cakes...

It is.

..in every way, and long forgotten.

Fascinating.

Of course, a lot of the ingredients in this are from the Mediterranean.

The fruit, the nuts, it says a lot about the exotic food

of the medieval community.

The great medieval English bake off.

'I love the playfulness of medieval food.

'These cooks intuitively understood

'that a good dinner wasn't just about the taste of the food,

'but also how it could deliver a theatrical experience.

'I'm going to leap forward 100 years in my dinner timeline

'to the Tudor period, when two enormous social changes

'radically altered the way we ate.

'Kentwell Hall in Suffolk was largely completed in the 1560s

'and is a glorious embodiment of the new Tudor values

'of flamboyance and display.

'With the Reformation,

'Henry VIII ended the dominance of the Catholic church

'and ushered in an age of excess,

'throwing the door wide open to gluttony.

'And at exactly the same moment,

'voyages of exploration were bringing exciting new ingredients

'to the Tudor dinner table.'

Kentwell is a perfect example of what the Elizabethan age is about.

It's all about show, it's about new money,

it's about money from the dissolution of the monasteries

and all sorts of new ingredients to tempt the flamboyant Elizabethan.

So you've got the tomatoes, the aubergines, the potatoes,

and then there's the sweet potato and every type of bean.

All the beans come from the New World.

And most exciting of all, sugar.

It was all the rage, the dernier cri.

People got really excited about sugar

and all the different things they could do with it.

It's all together a breath-taking time for food.

'Kentwell's owner, a fellow veteran of the legal profession,

'is retired QC, Patrick Phillips.'

Good Lord! Look at this. Amazing!

'He's kept the showy Tudor spirit alive here

'with his Tudor days historical re-enactments.'

Wonderful. But tell me, do you dress up for the Tudor days?

I do dress up. I used to dress up all the time.

There is me. I'd like to say that that was only last year,

but that was actually many years ago.

I think you possibly loved the flamboyance of that age.

Men dressed because they were showing off all the time.

Real peacocks.

Real peacocks and it's, I think, a sad decline

when it comes to a stage now when everybody, all of us,

myself included, you know, go around looking like a bag of shit, really.

Well, there are bags of shit and bags of shit and better manure.

And better manure, that's right.

So, yes, and it's such an exciting time. Our furniture started,

our painting started, our voyages of discovery started.

Henry VIII set the foundations for a great new future.

And I'm a great fan of Henry VIII, we share a birthday.

Oh well, of course. Now, that puts you into distinguished company.

'Gluttony was now a mark of aristocracy

'and wealthy Tudors focused their indulgence, above all, on sugar.

'It was the vital ingredient for a grand dinner

'and any self-respecting Tudor kitchen

'had a dedicated area just for confectionary.'

# Why doesn't my goose Sing as loud as thy goose

# When I paid for my goose Twice as much as thy... #

'Tissy Tabina, that's her 16th century character name,

'has been making sweet meats here for over 20 years.'

Ah, hello, there. It's so good to welcome you to this kitchen.

It's so wonderful to be here. It's amazing.

Come and sit down.

Now, that's a good chair.

It is a good chair, indeed. It's been here many, many years.

Many a cook has sat upon it.

I think that is why there is such an indentation.

Oh, yes, that's right, an ample cook's arse.

I want you to tell me something about the influence of sugar

in the Tudor Elizabethan kitchen.

Of course, it was not for the poor people or the common people.

It was only for those that had the money,

the wealth, to buy sugar. Mostly, it was very, very costly.

There would have been many maids,

around 12, 13 or 14 years old,

and they would have been pounding and pounding to get the sugar

to the right texture.

Where was it coming from at this period?

Well, mostly North Africa, Egypt and some of the islands as well.

'But Tudors wanted entertainment from their dinners.

'They painted marzipan made from sugar to fashion displays

'that could satisfy a sweet tooth and deliver a smile.

'They loved these edible sugar sculptures called subtleties.'

Perhaps you could explain a little more about what a subtlety is.

It wasn't just a pretty thing. It had to have meaning,

because it was presented at the end of the dinner

when the gentlefolk had all dined, to give them something to talk about.

The nearest I ever got to that was a corporate event where I made

the logo of a motorcar company in sugar and put one on each desert.

'During the Tudor period, our interest in food expanded

'and the first domestic cook books appeared.

'This age also produced one of my favourite cooks of all time.'

One of the people I would really, really wanted

to have gone to dinner with was Elinor Fettiplace.

She's one of my heroines.

She gave what is the first English recipe for meringue,

which she describes as white biskit bread.

It's a pound and a half of sugar, that's a lot of sugar,

the whites of 12 eggs beaten very fine and other ingredients.

Now we add the aniseed, and she says half a spoonful.

Well, a Tudor spoonful.

This is the unusual ingredient,

Dame Elinor says, "A spoonful of flour."

'The Tudors turned the medieval concept of dessert

'as a medicinal note to end a meal completely on its head.

'Instead, they wanted to gorge on a full blown symphony of sugar.

'This final course was so celebrated,

'it got its own name. The banquet.

'And it got its own building, too, known as the banqueting hall.'

Look at this wonderful array of things that Tissy has produced,

Tudor banqueting stuff and look, that's a sugar plate.

The whole plate is made of sugar.

Several of the Tudor recipe books

encourage you, at the end of the meal,

to break the plates and eat them.

When you think that all these dishes follow on

for what today we think of as being a very grand meal,

and they've been eating, probably, for an hour or two

before they came to this particular part.

-To the banquet.

-To the banquet.

And, in fact, the banquet was all the goodies at the end.

Exactly.

Ah-ha, here comes Tissy.

Now, Tissy...

White biscuit bread, fresh from the oven.

White biscuit bread, fresh from the oven. What could be better?

-It's a meringue.

-It is.

Really delicious.

This subtlety, Mistress Clarissa Dickson Wright,

is made to give you honour this day

and is a tribute to you in the form of a shield.

How lovely.

And here you have the crab, the sign you were born under, of Cancer.

-Your talents and your skill as a cook.

-Yes.

Numbers and letters that have a meaning for you.

Indeed, absolutely, from Two Fat Ladies.

And beans that I hear that you spilt.

SHE GUFFAWS

Very good. That's brilliant.

-Is the spilling of the beans your autobiography?

-My autobiography.

You may take it away with you.

Thank you. Yes, indeed, I would love to do that and I will treasure it.

'But there was a price to pay for eating all these sugary treats.

'The Tudors may have lived in an age of discovery

'but not, sadly, in an age of dentistry.

'I'm going to the Museum of London

'to meet archaeologist Mike Henderson.

'He's going to show me some rather remarkable oral history.

'If you're eating your dinner now, you might want to look away.'

Now, introduce me to your colleagues.

So, here we have a collection of some of our,

our medieval individuals and looking at their teeth...

This is a young male, probably in his early 20s,

and as you can see, there's very little dental disease.

He's got a perfect set of teeth there.

Amazing. He must have had a lovely smile.

Yes, yes, quite.

So, what would that show us about what he was having for dinner?

Perhaps there wasn't as much sugar in the diet.

Nothing to attack the teeth.

Do you see a huge deterioration in the teeth of skulls

that are sort of Elizabethan rather than medieval?

As sugar enters the diet, we see inflammation of the gums,

such as in this individual here. This is an elderly lady.

Gosh, she's got no teeth at all.

No, she's lost all the teeth of her mouth. She's completely edentulous.

Lord, what a wonderful word, edentulous.

We also see things like this.

This is an abscess that has formed.

Inflammation of the pulp cavity will cause pus to build up,

pressure will build and build and it needs to, to find a way out

and it forms this sinus here to release the fluid

and drain it, so this would have promoted bad breath and the decay

and the pus from abscesses is also going to cause really bad halitosis.

Yes, I think I've had boyfriends like that.

'The damage inflicted by sugar was alleviated

'a little, at least, by the arrival of the toothbrush,

'a concept brought to Europe from China in the 17th century.

'And there were other major innovations in our food technology

'that appear during the same period,

'reflecting social shifts in our approach to dining.

'I'm meeting food writer Bee Wilson,

'who's carved out a niche for herself

'as a historical cutlery expert.'

Ah, what have we here?

'She's ordering us food that will help illuminate the changes

'that rocked the world of 17th century table implements.'

Bee, we didn't always have the fork, did we?

The middle ages, they didn't have the fork.

Well, no. It's a very recent table implement in Britain, at any rate,

compared to either the spoon or the knife.

There's a kind of mystery about the fork, because it gets

adopted in Italy in Europe far earlier than any other country.

I think the reason is very simple. You can use one word - pasta.

The macaroni and vermicelli trade

goes all the way back to medieval times.

There's this man, Thomas Coryat, who went travelling in Italy

some time in the reign of Elizabeth, and he discovered in Italy

that people ate everything, including their meat, with a fork.

At first, he found this strange but then he discovered

he rather liked it and then came back and wrote about it in 1608.

His friends just ribbed him and made such fun of him

and called him Furcifer, which kind of means fork eater,

but it also meant rascal at that time.

He was just seen as a kind of social weirdo, really,

for using one of these things.

'But the fork did start to catch on.

'The first dinner forks were made with two flat prongs

'and owning one was a mark of wealth.

'Charles I, seen here dining with his wife, Henriette Maria,

'declared in 1633, "It is decent to use a fork".

'His seal of approval heralded the beginning of a much more

'refined attitude to our eating habits at the dinner table.'

By the end of the 17th century, everyone's using one.

We just take forks for granted at almost every meal now.

'The most essential item of cutlery had always been the knife,

'and this, too, would soon become a more genteel proposition.'

The thing that you see that starts to happen

after the adoption of the fork, table knives change.

I mean, they used to be very sharp,

but you then start to see these knife designs

coming out of the late 17th, 18th century,

which are ostentatiously blunt.

Those ones that are kind of shaped like that.

We'd think of that as a kind of butter knife shape, wouldn't we?

And it's really odd,

because it does a much worse job of cutting the food on the plate.

Another interesting thing with this change in knives

is part of the reason that so many of us, I include myself in this,

have bad knife skills,

because if you transfer the hold for a table knife onto a kitchen knife,

you end up with this...terrible.

-You shouldn't hold a kitchen knife like that.

-Like that, no.

But it's another polite way of saying, "Look, I'm not going to

"stab you with my dagger like this,

"I'm sort of keeping my finger safely like that.

"It's not a weapon. Don't worry, stay calm."

'Changes to the knife and fork

'reflected refined practicality and manners.

'But a sudden change to the spoon, as a direct result

'of the Restoration of Charles II in 1660,

'was nothing less than a badge of political allegiance.'

Under the Republic, people had these spoons called puritan spoons,

which had a slightly sort of rounder shape.

But the one thing that no-one in Britain before 1668

had ever eaten with was a spoon shaped like this.

Charles II ate with spoons like this. They were called trefids.

He had used these spoons at the French Court while he was in exile,

brought them back and just in the space of a very, very few years,

all silver spoons in Britain went over to the trefid shape.

If you had a puritan spoon, you'd be very careful to go

and get it melted down and re-made as a trefid.

-Yes, I'm for the King.

-Yes, patriotic spoons.

-Yes.

'As we moved into the 18th century,

'our dining habits continued to evolve,

'thanks to another life changing development.'

For centuries, the most readily available light source

was a tallow dip reed taper,

which didn't give a lot of light and was rather smelly

and was probably just used for supper -

the light meal at the end of the day,

which was a bit of bread and cheese or a bit of cold pie.

In the early 18th century,

dinner time moved forward to 3.00 or even 4.00 in the afternoon,

largely aided and abetted by the clearer brighter light

of the beeswax candle that had become more readily available,

at least to the better off.

'Dinner moved steadily later into the afternoon

'and opened up space in the day for a new meal called lunch,

'taken at midday.

'But it wasn't just candles that were lighting up our dinner tables.

'Advances in agriculture and stock breeding in the 18th century

'dramatically improved the quality of the central ingredient of dinner,

'our main meal of the day.'

We British now regard meat as a very vital part of our dinner.

It wasn't always like that.

We owe it to one funny little vegetable, the turnip.

'Here on this estate in Norfolk in the early 18th century,

'a revolution was launched

'which unlocked the mighty power of the turnip.

'The man behind it was the Second Viscount, Charles Townshend,

'nicknamed Turnip Townshend.

'He is one of my all-time food heroes.

'Thanks to his four course rotation system, which boosted crop yields,

'live-stock could be reared for meat all year round.

'We no longer had to survive on salted meat throughout the winter.

'Robin Ellis farms land here once owned by Turnip Townshend himself.'

-Hello.

-Hello, how are you?

-I'm all right, thank you. You?

-Good, very well, thanks.

What's your view on what Townshend did for food?

I think that he made meat available for 12 months,

fresh meat available for 12 months of the year

for an ever growing population,

but this was well before the ages of freezers and things like that.

So, there was fresh meat that could be fed on the turnips.

So, if you had your dinner,

you were far more likely to get beef or mutton after it?

Yes.

There, you see? That can only be a very good thing.

'Crop rotation wasn't a new idea,

'but Townshend's innovations delivered dramatic results.

'By growing wheat one year, turnips the second, barley the third

'and then a fallow year of restorative clover,

rich in nitrogen,

'the soil's fertility improved and crop yields surged.

'Suddenly, there was enough surplus to feed livestock

'throughout an entire winter and the turnip, above all,

'was particularly good at surviving the cold.'

What is the reputation of the Second Viscount now?

Is he still well regarded in agricultural circles?

I went to agriculture college.

We still had the four course rotation embedded in our memories.

Yes, it's...it's very good, actually.

We've slightly adjusted the rotation,

but I'm a great believer in rotating your crops.

And still following the principle.

The principle of it, precisely, yes.

But he wouldn't have had that revolting rape.

THEY LAUGH

Any of us who suffer from hayfever don't love rape.

'I think we should be eternally grateful

'for Turnip Townshend's

'revolutionary improvements to our diet.

'I'm meeting Lord Townshend, the current head of the household,

'at Raynham Hall, where Turnip Townshend himself was born.

'I want to find out more about how

'his ancestor's discoveries out in the field

'affected his dining table.'

-Good morning.

-Hello, how do you do?

-Nice to see you. Come on in.

How nice of you to invite us. Isn't this wonderful?

What I want to do is compare you with a picture of my hero,

your ancestor.

Ah, that may give you a shock.

THEY LAUGH

There he is, there he is.

So, this is the great man himself.

This is the great man himself. I hope I don't look too much like him.

No, but you've got the same nose.

-Shall we go this way?

-Yes, absolutely.

'Lord Townshend has brought out some rare 18th century menus

'from the archive, which reveal the household's enjoyment of meat.'

These were interesting, because this was a week,

a week of December 15th, 1751,

leg of mutton, chicken broth, salt fish and eggs and asparagus.

Then, for the servants, they had a leg of mutton.

And every meal has, for the servants, their menu as well

and they were eating a buttock of something, beef.

-Beef.

-A buttock of beef, isn't that lovely?

It's a rump.

This was a different sort of thing that was

a menu for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

It doesn't have Sunday. I don't know what they ate on Sunday.

Roast beef.

'And it wasn't just more meat on the table that was new.

'The humble vegetable that made it all possible

'also found its place on the menu.'

They did actually eat quite a lot of turnips and carrots.

They were in almost every meal.

So, you know, by 1752, root crops were part of the staple diet

and they probably wouldn't have been before.

They were grown in cottages, in little cottage gardens,

but they weren't really a sort of grand food.

No, certainly not.

You wouldn't have expected to find them in a house like this before.

Exactly, exactly. So he did quite a lot of good.

'The menus from the archive also reveal how much money

'was lavished upon fine dining during the period.'

And look at some of these prices.

Four teal wrapped in quality lard, £1.14.

They're very expensive. The whole meal cost £28.

You could add, certainly,

two, if not three, noughts to these figures.

And slightly against my better judgement,

-I've brought the original.

-Oh, how lovely.

This is the first time this piece of paper has ever

been taken out of the archives and shown to, I hate to say the public.

I'm not the public, I'm just a fat old cook.

Shown to a very eminent cook.

So kind, so kind, but I'm thrilled to see it.

'I believe a Georgian dinner is the high water mark of British dining,

'as these menus suggest.

'For the rich and powerful, the Georgian dining room

'reflected both a more intimate approach to dining,

'away from the medieval and Tudor communal halls,

'and a boom in decorative arts.

'Gracious new silver and tableware were displayed

'and the very best centrepieces would feature a pineapple,

'a £1,000 extravagance

'that became the defining emblem of 18th century hospitality.

'There were fashionable new candlesticks

'appearing on the dinner table and, if you could afford it,

'you'd have a chandelier,

'a word first recorded in England in the 1730s.

'I've done my own bit of dabbling in the Raynham Hall kitchen

'and I've come up with a menu based on the archives

'to serve to Lord and Lady Townshend and Robin Ellis.

'It's my culinary tribute to Turnip Townshend.'

We've got the fish course, which is there.

We've got oysters and crayfish and pickled herrings,

and then you've got this wonderful beef cooked in red wine.

This is your buttock of beef that was in the recipe

we were looking at earlier on.

Cabbage with bacon and, of course, the inevitable turnips and carrots.

Wonderful.

Right, dig in.

'The Georgian era was an age of change when it came to dinner.

'It wasn't only the meat and candles,

'but the service of food was evolving, too.

'Although courses of sweet and savoury dishes still arrived

'mixed together, medieval style, some food, such as cold beef,

'would be left on a sideboard for diners to help themselves.'

I'm going to go straight onto the buttock of beef.

Everyone is being very polite with the oysters.

Yeah, well, all the more for you.

I think that's probably my... my first course.

'It's wonderful to celebrate Turnip Townshend's achievements

'with one of his descendants.'

Everybody, including the local sheep producers,

they benefited enormously from what Charles Townshend did here,

and enabled people to produce sheep better

than they could ever do in the past.

Have you ever had salt mutton?

Yes, thank you very much.

Well, all the more reason to be devoted to your ancestor.

'The Georgians also forever changed the way we sat down to dinner.

'The custom of seating a lady next to every male diner became the norm.

'It allowed for flirting and for more civilised conversation.'

It's really good, isn't it?

How do you feel being married to the descendant of this

iconic agriculturalist and promoter of the turnip?

You mean being married to the descendant of Turnip?

Yes, absolutely, but I'm trying to avoid saying it.

The most charming thing about Turnip Townshend is that,

if you ask anybody who's been schooled in Norfolk,

they all know who Turnip Townshend was.

Which I think is really lovely.

A toast to Turnip Townshend.

Turnip Townshend.

'By the end of the 18th century,

'beef was regularly on the dinner menu

'and part of our national identity.

A patriotic new ballad, The Roast Beef Of Old England,

written in 1730 by Henry Fielding, was on everyone's lips.

# When mighty roast beef was the Englishman's food

# It ennobl'd our veins and enriched our blood... #

'Hogarth created this print of the same name.'

# Oh, the roast beef of Old England

# And Old English roast beef. #

'18th century beef steak clubs were the height of fashion,

'confirming the traditional French nickname for us, le rosbif,

'and all the while, dinner continued its relentless march

'later and later in the day, thanks to a wonderful new invention.'

The greatest innovation in oil lighting since Roman times

came with the invention of

the argand lamp in the late 18th century,

which gave out as much light as ten beeswax candles.

With mains gas becoming available in the 19th century,

dinner moved forward to as late as 8.00, if not later.

'By the Victorian era, all the elements

'we saw at dinner in the Apothecaries Hall are now in place.

'Everyone eats with a knife and fork

'and service a la francais is now replaced by service a la russe,

'a new custom brought to the west in the early 1800s

'by the Russian Ambassador to Paris, Count Alexander Curacao.

'For the first time,

'set courses are plated up in the kitchen before being served.

'On the table, non-edible ornaments replace sumptuous displays of food.

'But just when our formal dinner-time customs

'should have their crowning moment of glory,

'something rotten arrives to derail our dinner.

'The middle classes, freshly minted from the Industrial Revolution,

'wanted to show off their new wealth with dinner parties.

'They needed advice on how to do it and this is where

'our reputation for fine dining drives headlong off the cliff.

'In my view, Mrs Beeton is one of the main culprits.

'Don't be fooled by the elegant pictures in her book.

'The food is deplorably pretentious,

'boiled to a pulp and purged of taste.

'This London restaurant prides itself on championing

'traditional British food, so I've asked head chef Lee Tearman

'to turn his hand to some basic Victorian recipes.

'He's making boiled carrots.'

We're going to boil these for 30 minutes.

We'll see if Mrs Beeton's correct in her estimations.

'Boiled asparagus.'

So the asparagus should be ready.

We just murdered it.

'Fish curry.'

A tablespoon of curry powder and then put it on a moderate fire.

'And a cake.'

This is an egg powder cake. It's not actually egg,

it's a vegetable compound.

There's also no raising agent in it,

so there's no chance for it to become light.

'While Lee finishes off the food,

'I'm going to join historian Fiona Lucraft to try to work out

'what went wrong in the Victorian age.'

The population is moving. It's moving from the country,

where you literally go outside to the garden and you pick herbs.

You've got eggs right there.

I think it's something like a fifth of the population

were in the city at the beginning of the 19th century.

And by the end, there's four fifths of people moving to urban areas,

and you lose the contact with nature, with how food is made.

'Growing ranks of servants,

'often people with minimal or no experience,

'were hired to cook for their aspirational employers

'and desperately needed guidance.'

The thing about cookery books is, I think, linked

to the growth of the middle class.

It's this group of people that want to emulate the wealthy

and they need to learn how.

The idea for the 18th century, and then

it continues with the Victorians, is learn from a book.

A book's a nice solid object. You can always refer to it.

'But it was a near impossible task to give advice to cooks

'who were literally starting from scratch

'to cater for people who wanted

'but lacked any understanding of fine dining.

'This Cassell's Household Guide recipe for hashed mutton

'offers catch-all solutions to mask dull flavours or cooking disasters.'

This is where they're beginning to give you

an indication of where things are going wrong.

"After making sure there are no cinders in it."

There is an expectation in this recipe that you've got burnt meat

on the outside and raw, undercooked in the middle.

"Flavour with a dessert spoonful of the vinegar,

"some mushroom catchup and, if you like,

"a little Harvey's or Worcestershire sauce."

So, what is being relied on here are all these extra bottled elements

that the Victorians are now really very excited about.

Packaged this, bottled that,

and it's what I would call moving further and further away

from making these things yourself

and therefore knowing what the flavours are

and knowing how much of things to put in.

'So much for the cookery books.

'It's time to find out what the food actually tastes like.'

Half an hour carrots.

THEY LAUGH

And that's some 15 minute asparagus.

Oh, my. Well, you could mash that.

It reminds me of baby food.

It's sort of like cud.

So here we have fish curry.

Now, I'm going to eat the grey mullet.

Right, this is edible, which I did not think the recipe was.

-Don't put it on the menu.

-I definitely won't.

'And, finally, the egg powder cake.'

It's more dense than anything.

It's quite dense, he says.

That's going to line your stomach.

It's extremely sweet.

I couldn't really say there was anything pleasant about it.

If you took that down to the river and fed the ducks...

-It would sink, definitely.

-It would sink, yeah.

'Despite serving terrible food,

'the Victorians were obsessed with dinner parties.'

Dinner was one of the few places where men could meet future wives,

where future mothers-in-law could inspect

their future daughters-in-law.

Do you know how to hold a knife and fork?

Do you know which one to use?

And somebody described it as, I think,

"The tyranny of the dinner party."

I think it must have been tyranny, indeed,

and especially for us poor women in our corsets.

'In the first half of the 20th century,

'our reputation for dinner deteriorated further.

'What the Victorians started, the Germans finished off.

'Wartime rationing put an end to much entertaining.

'The grand spectacle of the showy dinner lingered on life support.

'But another revolution stepped in to revive it,

'that of the mass media,

'which launched the advent of the celebrity chef.

'Fanny Cradock was the one who came first,

'a woman who intuitively connected cooking with performance.'

There you simply go on adding a little cheese

and a little milk and doing the same thing...

'Here she is with husband Johnny in a recording from 1956,

'hamming it up for the crowds and the camera.'

You're taking the Michael out of me all the time.

Well, maybe you'll eat your words.

I'd sooner do that than eat your pudding, anyhow.

Would you, huh?

Would you?

APPLAUSE

'And here I am in a typical 21st century TV studio

'with my old friend, food and television critic, A A Gill.

'I want to find out what he thinks of Fanny Cradock

'and her mission to revive the ritual of dinner.'

At the end of the '50s and the beginning of the '60s,

there was a generation of women who had never been taught

how to cook for pleasure and all of the cooking that they'd done

was to make the most of very sparse, usually very third rate ingredients.

Food was fuel. You sat down and what was important was to be polite,

have decent table manners and clear your plate.

'What Fanny Cradock did then was to give women the confidence to cook.

Prod it all over. Think of somebody you've never really liked

but you're too well bred to say what you think of them,

so you take it out on a good bit of meat and stab it all over.

There is two sorts of food that you serve in your house.

There is the food that we eat.

A beastly job, this. You dip your hands into thin honey.

And then, there's the food that company eats.

I mean, Fanny Cradock is really Saturday evening food.

She brought this idea that you could show off.

There's your presentation dish.

And what she offered us was snobbery.

All beautifully moistening, ready for you to carve it.

There's an awful lot of food is about snobbery,

and there's no point in pretending

that an enormous amount of food isn't about snobbery.

And Fanny Cradock really was the most wonderful Cordon Bleu snob.

'Adrian and I are going to pay tribute to Fanny Cradock

'by having a stab at one of her dinner party classics -

'duckling with apples, for which you need, amongst other things,

'one good sized duck and a sandwich loaf.'

Now, do you have a preference which side down you put your breast?

-I have...

-THEY GIGGLE

No, I have no preference. I tend to put it skin side down.

Skin side down. There we are.

While your breasts are searing,

shall we do something with the apples?

Yes, what does she suggest you do?

What does she suggest?

Oh, no, we've got to do it in the duck fat afterwards.

Are we really standing here waiting for this?

You can put the legs in now, cos they take less time.

-They take far less time.

-So now, you take your...

We take our apples.

Do you think we're now supposed to use this cider?

I suppose we are.

I'm going to put the ducks in here with the apples.

I suspect that we're supposed to fry this.

Cooking with LEGO.

I'm now putting in my LEGO into the hot oil.

Do you think the cameraman can catch?

I shouldn't think so for one moment.

Oh, impressive.

HE LAUGHS

-This is the bit that she was always very...

-Partial.

..partial to, which was the display.

-Oh, look at that.

-Perfect.

-Perfect.

-Perfect.

Her breast goes in there.

I think that we sort of, in an Elizabethan way,

arrange them like that, and now we have apple sauce.

-Look at that.

-Amazing.

-And now...

-One you made earlier.

Yes, one we made earlier.

And then you hold it up for the money shot.

Doesn't that look lovely?

'We now eat our dinner at an average time of 7.48pm,

'when a lot of cooking shows are on television.

'We've become a generation of armchair cooks

'and I often wonder what people actually eat

'as they watch these shows.

'Quite probably, it's another innovation

'that's influenced our dining habits, the ready meal.

'I'm on my way to a place that produces

'over 100,000 of these things a week,

'which can be heated direct from the freezer.

'But here, they're on a mission to elevate the ready meal

'from a solitary TV dinner to off-the-shelf dinner-party fare

'that will impress your guests.

'I'm meeting three members of the development team,

'Dale, James and Edward, to taste some of their future offerings.'

This is a very high risk strategy.

Presenting game things to Clarissa Dickson Wright.

Am I allowed a voice?

Of course, you're the perfect test.

Yes, I am the perfect test.

Right, roll on.

OK, Joe. What have we got?

We've got our venison Wellington.

Oh, nice.

-Does it come with the...?

-It comes with the red wine sauce.

With the gravy, with the red wine sauce.

I love it raw. Raw? Rare, even.

I like it so a good vet can bring it back to life.

That's a bit overdone for you. Shall I give you that bit first?

Thank you.

Is this something that you would make yourself?

Yes. I mean, I eat a lot of venison, although I do prefer the wild,

I have to say.

'It's very unusual for a ready meal to pass my lips,

'and I'm as curious as to what I'll make of it

'as everyone else seems to be.'

What do you think?

I think it's extremely nice.

I would have seasoned the meat a little more, but I think that

red wine jus is quite delicious, one of the best I've ever tasted.

How about that? High praise.

One thing I'm brutally truthful about is food.

'I'm genuinely surprised to find

'that a ready meal could be so palatable,

'and it leads me to wonder who buys these elaborate pre-made dinners.'

People are still fairly conservative about what they eat,

certainly on Monday to Friday.

You know, Friday night, maybe Saturday,

they'll be a bit more adventurous. "Let's try this, let's try that."

Entertaining is the other... the other big thing, in a sense that

people want to cook for friends and have people over.

So you want to do the bits you enjoy.

But actually, some of it, you'd much rather somebody else did it for you.

Some of them own up and some of them don't.

So you're back to the whole thing of showing off to your friends.

"Look how clever I am."

So, the Monday morning phone call,

"Can I have the recipe, cos I've lied?",

does happen now and again.

But then what they should say is,

"Oh, no. If I told you, I'd have to kill you. This is my speciality".

'We now live in an age of convenience cooking,

'even when we're entertaining.

'But perhaps these meals do have something in common

'with our grand dinners of the past.

'I don't believe in golden ages of dining,

'but I think the mid-18th century, if you had the money,

'was as close as you can get.

'Grand homes like this were a stage for what I imagine

'was some pretty elegant and sumptuous dinners.

'We might not do it quite like this now, but I believe that

'there's a common element to the way we've eaten dinner over the ages.'

Dinner is the meal most associated with fashion and social ostentation.

It is where you show off your grand clothes

and embrace theatrical display.

You may wonder what a gourmet ready meal has in common

with a medieval feast or a grand banquet,

but the one thing that we haven't lost is the desire to enjoy

good company with food.

And in that, it doesn't really matter what we're eating,

because every generation has its own priorities.

'It's the company that matters.

'In the past, people devoted huge amounts

'of time and energy to their meals.

'Nowadays, we're usually too busy

'and that's reflected in what and how we eat.

'But meals are not just about food.

'They're social events that connect us all

'and I thoroughly disapprove of families who fail to eat together.

'Our meals have always been moveable feasts,

'but the irony is that we can eat better now

'than at almost any other time in the past, if we care to.

'I urge everyone to reconnect

'with the traditions of fresh local produce.

'Take time to cook and eat together,

'then we'll be getting the best out of our daily meals.'

Gosh, that's nice. Gosh, that's really, really nice.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd