Pie drama! TV gives us a taste for old recipes
THE nation can’t get enough of costume dramas – but it seems our love for them has triggered another unexpected desire.
All those 19th century kitchen and dining scenes in the likes of Victoria and Vanity Fair have whetted our appetite for dishes that were thought to have been consigned to the scraps bin decades ago.
Traditional meats like goat, mutton and venison are staging a comeback in the supermarkets, while home cooks are signing up for courses which recreate classic dishes such as game pie with pickled peach and grapes.
Game of Thrones is even said to have helped promote mediaeval-style banqueting.
Cookery demonstrations inspired by the 140-year-old recipes of Victorian cook Avis Crocombe – who worked in the kitchens of Audley End, a Jacobean mansion used in period dramas such as The Crown – have recently become a major hit on YouTube with an astonishing 12 million views around the world. According to food historian Pen Vogler, there is no doubt period TV drama is driving the resurgence of interest: ‘People feel cooking the dishes of the past is a lovely way to discover it,’ she explains.
‘You can also use traditional recipes in their original form with measurements such as “as much thyme as will fit on a penny”.’
Waitrose has just started restocking venison liver, after a 40-year hiatus, thanks to public demand. And professional kitchens, too, are raiding the historic larder, seeking out obscure herbs which would once have taken pride of place in Victorian and Regency kitchens.
Jekka McVicar, a leading supplier and grower of herbs, points to the growing popularity of long-lost varieties in the restaurant trade.
‘The hottest young chefs are asking me for sweet woodruff which tastes like newly-mowed hay, sheep sorrel, sea kale, rock samphire which has a salty aniseed taste, and Good King Henry which is a little like spinach,’ she says. ‘We’re in rocky times and people want nostalgia and comfort and also the kind of herbs they see in dramas on television.’