I love food, and I have always had a fascination for history, so the blurb for this book made it sound exactly like the sort of book I would love and I wasn’t disappointed.
Stella is a writer. She writes a recipe column for a woman’s magazine and has also written one historically rather dry (apparently) biography on an English cook who should be more well-known than she is, I later discovered through my own research that her cookbook contained the first ever modern version of Macaroni Cheese (however I digress). The book was not the success either she or her publisher wanted it to be, so she has another idea, to write about the origin of English food and her publisher laps it up.
In the search for the material she needs to write this book, we see Stella travelling across the country seeking out the origins of various county and country meals, especially those that seem to inspire happy thoughts and memories. However, more importantly, while she is learning about these meals with history, she learns about herself and grows closer to the memory of her mother, who died several years previously.
Along the way she meets people, including the rather charming Freddie – who appears in her life at a time when she is reeling from the revelation that a long-term friend, Michael, is marrying someone who everyone thinks is not right for him – and her father moves to live with her in a small cottage when he sells the family farm.
Unfortunately, Freddie is not quite the endearing companion he initially appears to be. I think that given the timing of his arrival in Stella’s life, he is the ideal foil for her at that particular moment, but in with just a few actions he removes himself as a potential suitor, despite seemingly having no clue as to what he has done wrong (he’s done something very wrong if you ask me…but to reveal it would be to reveal more than I would like in a spoiler-free review).
Stella has some fascinating friends, including Dilys a neighbour who is interested in nature and herbology as well as making unusual wines and Lucien a French man who lives with Michael in London and has a very dim view of English food.
There are a couple of twists that I honestly did not expect and the book was incredibly fun, more so after I realised that certain plot points that were merely hinted at earlier on went far deeper than I could have imagined.
I will say that I was incredibly surprised at the way it felt so timeless. It’s based in 1932-1933 but it could have been written at any point in time. There are moments when the time period is incredibly clear, but Stella, Dilys and even Michael’s fiancee Cynthia are so independent that it could have been based in the 1990s and not lost any of its charm.
Though the story seems incredibly straightforward and as though it’s all about the food, there is a lot more to it and I would definitely recommend it.
