Episode description

Lady Fanshawe’s ‘Receipt Book’ (c.1651-1707) provides the inspiration for a public cooking event at Tamworth castle hosted by the academic Sara Read which includes preserving vegetables and a look at etiquette. Ideas about hospitality and how we behave when we eat are at the heart of a quiz organised by researchers at Edge Hill University. Both are part of the Being Human Festival and Sara Read and Zayneb Allak join Lindsay Middleton, who is researching food poverty, luxury ingredients and tin cans. Lisa Mullen is also joined at the Free Thinking table for a conversation about new research into food history by two authors: Rebecca May Johnson has written a memoir called Small Fires: an epic in the kitchen and Pen Vogler's History of Good Food and Hard Times in Britain is called Stuffed. So join them for a conversation which covers eel soup, salads, real butter and How to Cook a Wolf.

Producer: Jayne Egerton

The Being Human Festival runs from Nov 9th to 19th showcasing university research from around the UK in a series of public events https://www.beinghumanfestival.org/ Dr Sara Read teaches at Loughborough University and is running a workshop at Tamworth Castle on Nov 18 Rebecca May Johnson is running an experimental cooking demo in Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex on Nov 18 and her memoir is called Small Fires Zaynab Allak at Edge Hill University is running events to do with hospitality 10-16 November Dr Lindsay Middleton is a literary historian of nineteenth-century food writing at the University of Glasgow. Her research projects include Dishes for the Sick Room: Invalid Recipes from Glasgow's Culinary Collections Pen Vogler is the author of Stuffed: A History of Good Food and Hard Times in Britain and Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain

You can find more episodes exploring new research in a collection on the Free Thinking programme website including other New Thinking podcast episodes made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI