 | Alexandra Hicks gave the first authoritative published account of the identity of the
pink peppercorns which had become a fad in the 1980s. In PPC 10.
|
| Jennifer Stead was the first to reveal the extent to which the famous cookery author
Hannah Glasse (The Whole Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy,1747) plagiarised an
earlier cookbook, The Whole Duty of a Woman, and others. The painstaking research
by Stead has become a model for others working on the history of cookery books (which of
course affect the history of cooking). In PPC 13 and 14.
|
| The first ‘story’ in Europe about the Californian craze for cooking on car
engines appeared in PPC 39.
|
| Marjorie Cohn revealed the original source of Fearing Burr’s ‘snails,
caterpillars and worms’, as garnish for salads, in PPC 27.
|
| Alan Davidson revealed the existence of a British Government cookbook, which appears to
have been discussed by the British Cabinet and to have had an input from Mrs Thatcher
about the use of dishcloths. In PPC 40.
|
| Fiona Lucraft, following in Jennifer Stead’s steps, provided the first exposure of
John Farley as an 18th century cookbook ‘author’. She showed that of his 800
plus recipes all but one were pinched from earlier books, notably that by Mrs
Raffald.
Possibly the worst of all the many instances of plagiarism in the 18th century. Lucraft
exposed in detail the techniques by which Farley (in reality, a hack called Richard
Johnson who, it has since been learned, was paid a total of just over £40 to do the job
for him, and to attend to later editions) tried to cover his traces. The revelations are
in PPC 42 and 43 (and, for Johnson, PPC 58).
|
| Alan Davidson, Anissa Helou & Helen J Saberi, revealing the botanical identity of
‘bois de Panama’, the spice which is the basis of natif (the ‘cream’
served with Lebanese pastries). See PPC 47, 48 and 49.
|
| The first comprehensive history of Trifle, that most popular of English (indeed British)
desserts, includes its appearance elsewhere in Europe (Zuppa inglese in Italy) and
in other continents (North America, Australia). By Helen J Saberi, in PPC 50.
|
| The most wide-ranging study of the use of jelly in English cuisine from early medieval
times to the present, by Peter Brears, whose lectures and demonstrations on the subject
have attracted international attention, appeared in two instalments in PPC 53 and 54.
|
| An essay, by Su-Mei Yu, about what is probably the earliest published collection of
recipes for Thai cookery, which she had picked up for a song in a Bangkok street market,
came out in PPC 58.
|
| The first translation of an important early Chinese culinaary text (The Cloud Forest
Hall Collection of Rules for Drinking and Eating, composed by Ni Tsan in the 14th century)
by Teresa Wang and Professor E N Anderson. In PPC 60.
|
| Results of what seems to have been the first serious enquiry, by a group of PPC
detectives, into the life and work of ‘Olivia’, author of some charming books on
cookery in Burma in the 1930s. Also in PPC 60.
|
| Elucidation of the history of summer pudding. In the summer of 1999 this still counts as
‘work in progress’, but already the efforts of several PPC detectives (notably
Audrey Levy, Elizabeth Driver, Helen J Saberi) have pushed the origins of this delightful
dessert far back beyond ‘the 1930s’, which was previously thought to be the
period of origin. The latest revelations are in PPC 61. |
