Travel around the South West of England through the pages of this book and discover a selection of the delicious traditional food of the area, as well as stories and fascinating facts behind the recipes. Your journey is given added flavour by the delightful historical images from The Francis Frith Collection, showing the people and places of the South West of England in the past.

A Taste of the South-West includes 35 recipes, some traditional, some reflecting local products that the South West of England is famous for, some linked to characters or historical personages or events, some versions adapted to suit modern tastes.

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A Taste of the South-West is peppered with topic boxes of additional snippets and information about regional dialect, words and phrases, traditional customs and local trivia, to convey a true flavour of the South West of England. Read on for a just a few of the fascinating facts from the book.

More about this book

• ISBN: 1-84589-455-3
• Compiled by Julia Skinner
• Printed to order and Despatched in 3-5 days
• Add your own inscription! - tell me more...
• 96 pages, Paperback
• Size: 246mm x 189mm (10" x 7")

• One of the West Country's most famous dishes is the Cornish Pasty, a pastry "envelope" containing meat and vegetables. It is said to have originally been devised as a portable lunch for Cornwall's fishermen, farmworkers, clayworkers and tin and copper miners. The style of the crimp (where the two edges meet and are sealed) varies from one area to another. There are many traditional versions of pasty recipes, but usually people just used to add whatever was available. Cornish pasties should never be made with mince, but with good chuck steak cut by hand into tiny pieces, and all the fillings – including the meat – should be put into the pasty uncooked. The vegetables should be coarsely grated, so that they all cook at the same time.
• Devon fish from both sea and rivers is famous, particularly its salmon, hake and sole, as well as shellfish, scallops and crab, but a wide variety of fish is caught. One of the most popular fish caught from the famous fishing port of Brixham is John Dory, often known as St Peter's fish – the black "thumbprints" on each side of its head are said to be the marks of St Peter, who was a fisherman.
• One of Cornwall's most famous traditional recipes is that for Stargazy Pie, in which pilchards are placed in a pie dish with their heads resting on the rim. Other ingredients such as herbs and bacon are added, and the fish are then covered with pastry, leaving the heads outside the pie, "gazing at the stars". The dish is traditionally linked with the village of Mousehole, where it is eaten on 23rd December – Tom Bawcock's Eve. The story goes that many years ago, during a long period of bad weather, the Mousehole fishing fleet was unable to leave the harbour, and the village was starving. One brave man, Tom Bawcock, was so concerned that he managed to put to sea and catch just enough fish to feed the village. The fish (some stories say there were seven varieties) were made into a pie with their heads left on, so that nothing would be wasted.
• Drake's Leat, Plymouth's original water supply, was built by Sir Francis Drake in 1590-91 at a cost of £300. The leat brought water seventeen miles from the head of the River Meavy, "carried every way to get the vantage of the hills". The distance as the crow flies is only nine miles, and the leat represents a fair engineering achievement. For the last 400 years, the bringing of fresh, clean water to Plymouth by Drake has been celebrated by the annual "Fyshinge Feaste" in June. The Mayor of Plymouth and his council congregate at the head weir of the leat, where official toasts are drunk, from a goblet filled with water from the leat, "to the pious memory of Sir Francis Drake". Another goblet, this time filled with red wine, is then passed round, with each person drinking a further toast: "May the descendants of him who brought us water never want". As part of the tradition, a meal of local trout caught from the leat is then eaten.
• Sir Walter Raleigh is famous for introducing the ordinary potato to England from the New World, but Plymouth's Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins brought sweet potatoes to England around 1563-65. Drake said of sweet potatoes: "These potatoes be the most delicate rootes that may be eaten, and doe farre exceed out passeneps or carets. Their pines be of the bignes of two fists, the outside whereof is of the making of a pine-apple, but it is soft like the rinde of a cucomber, and the inside eateth like an apple but it is more delicious than any sweet apple sugared." Sweet potatoes are now easily available in most supermarkets and greengrocer shops, and can be cooked in all the ways that ordinary potatoes are used, but cook much more quickly.
• Cabbages are said to be have been introduced to England by Sir Anthony Ashley, who imported cabbages from Holland in the 16th century to grow in the kitchen garden of his house at Wimborne St Giles in Dorset.
• The young shoots of nettles have been eaten in the spring by country people for centuries, as a welcome source of fresh greens at the time of year before other vegetables are ready to eat. Only the tender top sprigs should be eaten, and can be cooked in the same way as spinach, or made into a tasty soup with pieces of bacon and milk. The acid which causes the nettles to sting is destroyed by cooking. The tradition of eating nettles in Dorset is continued in one of England’s most eccentric events, the annual Stinging Nettle Eating Challenge which is held at the Bottle Inn at Marshwood in west Dorset – the brave competitors who take part actually eat raw nettles!
• Cheddar is a small town to the south of the Mendip Hills in Somerset, close to the spectacular Cheddar Gorge, which has given its name to a cheese that has now become world famous. Originally, the cheese had to be produced within 30 miles of Wells Cathedral to be classed as "Cheddar cheese". This type of cheese has become so popular that is now made all over the world, but there are still a few farms in Somerset where "true" Cheddar cheese is made. The biggest recorded Cheddar cheese ever made was produced for Queen Victoria's wedding in 1840; it weighed 11 cwt and used the milk from 737 cows. The monster cheese was made by the farmers of the villages of East and West Pennard, near Glastonbury in Somerset, as a wedding present for the royal couple.

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  A Taste of Yorkshire

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  A Taste of the North-East

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  A Taste of Lincolnshire and the Fens

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  A Taste of East Anglia

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  A Taste of the South-East

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  A Taste of the North-West

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  A Taste of Cumbria and the Lake District

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  A Taste of the East Midlands

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  A Taste of Scotland

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  A Taste of Wales