English Provincial Cooking by Elisabeth Ayrton 1980

Condition: Vintage Like New -appears unread.  Dust jacket has minor edge wear and shelf wear. 

English Provincial Cooking contains recipes selected from family records old manuscripts & cook books. It covers regional specialties (some highly unusual), with their origins (usually Medieval to 19th Century - but in a few cases, back to Roman Britain).

Ayrton starts each chapter with a discussion of the specific region of England: East Anglia, The North, Midlands, West Country, South and Southeast, Home Counties, and London. These go into a fair amount of detail on the general origins of cooking traditions by region, based on terrain/agriculture, trade, and culture.  There are also interesting digressions about such topics as primitive cooking and shipboard foods (including treatments for scurvy - beyond the usual lime juice).  Ayrton frequently includes the first written mention of a dish with the recipes. ~ from abridged reader review.