Welcome to Episode 7 of Season B. This is a Listener’s Choice ep, and things get hot, messy and monstrous as Sam, Neil and Alessandra look at Boiling, Bloody Mary and bay leaves.

Things mentioned in this episode

Sam Bilton wins at the Fortum & Mason Awards

Museum of Royal Worcester project wins at the British Library Food Season Awards

Sam’s black pudding episode on Comfortably Hungry

Neil is appearing at the Chalke Festival on 27 June

Follow Serve it Forth History Festival 18 October on Instagram @serveitforthfest

Links & Further Reading

Boiling

Acton, E. (1845). Modern Cookery For Private Families. Quadrille.

Beeton, I. (1861). The Book of Household Management. Lightning Source.

Davidson, A. (1999). The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford University Press.

Grigson, J. (1992). English Food (Third Edit). Penguin.

McGee, H. (1984). On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (1st ed.). Allen and Unwin.

Smith, D. (1998). Delia’s How to Cook Book 1. BBC Books.

Bayleaf:

Culpeper’s Herbal (I’ll find a link late)

What Is a Bay Leaf, Exactly? – Atlas Obscura https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-a-bay-leaf

Pliny Natural History iv: Books 12-16 https://archive.org/details/L370PlinyNaturalHistoryIV1216/page/n391/mode/2up?q=laurel

Ovid Metamorphosis https://www.gutenberg.org/files/21765/21765-h/21765-h.htm

Bloody Mary:

Why Is There an Entire Fried Chicken on My Bloody Mary?: An exploration of outrageous garnishes and the drink’s over-the-top evolution. The Spruce Eats

The Tomato in America by Andrew F. Smith (1994): A rich history of the tomato- from suspicion to Bloody Mary staple. Essential reading for any cocktail historian.

James Bond’s Other Drink: Long before Vesper, Bond was sipping Bloody Marys- shaken, not stirred, of course. Bormioli Luigi

Bloody Mina Gothtail: A Gothic twist on the classic- dark, dramatic, and dangerously drinkable. Instagram Recipe

Welcome to Episode 6 of Season B. The theme is ‘Meat’ and Sam, Neil and Alessandra get beefy with three choice nuggets of fleshy goodness, looking at Beef Wellington, Brains and Bovril. Don’t get the meat sweats!

Don’t forget the next episode is the Listeners’ Choice. Please send your suggestions (with a reason why you’ve chosen it) to aisofrapplepod@gmail.com. Your deadline is 21st May!

Links & Further Reading

• Did Sam win the awards for Best Audio at the Fortnum & Mason Awards?
• Allie will be taking part in the online conference an ONLINE conference on 23rd and 24th August 2025 marking the 100th anniversary of MR James A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories talking about food and the supernatural: https://romancingthegothic.com/2025/01/06/cfp-for-a-warning-to-the-curious-ghostly-supernatural-and-weird-tales/
• Follow Serve it Forth history festival on Instagram @serveitforthfest
• The Leeds Symposium of Food History and Traditions facebook page

Beef Wellington

• Manuale de cuoco e del pasticciere III by Vincenzo Agnoletti (1834) (Italian)
• Paddington Takes The Test by Michael Bond (1999)
• Julia Child cooks beef wellington on The French Chef
• Betty Crocker’s Hostess Cookbook (1967)
• Irish Traditional Food by Theodora Fitzgibbon (1984)
• Fashionable food: seven decades of food fads by Sylvia Lovegren, (1995)
• The French Menu Cookbook by Richard Olney (1970)
• You can read more about the Waterloo banquets on the Apsley House and Wellington Arch blog here and here.
• Lines of Wellington trailer
• Read about how beef wellington was used as a murder weapon in Australia.

Brains

• English Food (Third Edition) by Jane Grigson (1992
• The Complete Nose to Tail: A Kind of British Cooking by Fergus Henderson...