Travel around the East Midlands 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 East Midlands in the past.

A Taste of the East Midlands includes 31 recipes, some traditional, some reflecting local products that the East Midlands 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 East Midlands 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 East Midlands. Read on for a just a few of the fascinating facts from the book.

More about this book

• ISBN: 1-84589-464-2
• 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")

• There is an old saying "Shake a Leicestershire yeoman, and you will hear the beans rattle". This is a reference to the staple diet of the county's agricultural labourers in former times. "Bean-belly Leicestershire" was once a name given to the county, because of the extent to which beans were grown there.
• Stilton cheese was first developed in the villages to the east of Melton Mowbray, possibly as early as the 14th century. The cheese became famous when Mrs Frances Pawlett, a dairywoman who lived near Melton Mowbray, entered into a business arrangement with Cooper Thornhill, who agreed to market her cheese. Thornhill was the owner of the Bell Inn at Stilton in Cambridgeshire, which acted as a staging post for people travelling along what is now the A1 between London and York. He began to introduce the cheese to travellers staying at the inn, and its popularity spread rapidly. The cheese then took its name from the town, despite the fact that it has never actually been made in Stilton. Stilton, a creamy, blue-veined cheese, has become known as "The King of Cheeses". Today, a 16lb Stilton cheese takes 17 gallons of milk to produce, and at least two months to mature. Stilton is one of the few cheeses to have been granted a "protected designation of origin" status by the European Commission. This means that there are strict codes for the quality of the cheese, and it can only be made in the counties of Leicestershire, Derbyshire or Nottinghamshire.
• Bedfordshire Clangers - This old recipe has always been known as Bedfordshire Clangers, although only one large roll is made. Nowadays it often takes the form of a pasty with a savoury filling at one end and a sweet at the other, but originally both meat and fruit were incorporated into the dish together, as in this recipe. There were often clanger-eating contests at local fairs in both Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire, where a version of this steamed, sweet-and-savoury suet pasty was also popular. There are several suggestions for the origin of the word "clanger". It may have derived from a dialect word meaning "to stuff oneself", or "to eat voraciously". An alternative suggestion is that "clanger" implies that this solid, heavy dish would make a loud noise, or clang, if it was dropped. A third suggestion is that clanger is linked to the dialect word "claggy", meaning soft, substantial and sticky – describing the suet dough the dish is made from.
• The recipe for the famous HP brown sauce was invented by a Nottingham shopkeeper, Frederick Gibson Garton. He called his sauce HP as he heard that it was being served in one of the restaurants in the Houses of Parliament. Unfortunately Mr Garton failed to make his fortune with HP sauce, as he sold the recipe and brand name for £150 to settle some debts.
• Today Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire is most widely-known for the world-famous Melton Mowbray pork pie, which originated in Melton in 1831. The town was situated within easy reach of all the premier Shire fox-hunting packs and Edward Adcock, who ran a bakery adjacent to the Fox Inn in Leicester Street, recognised the popularity of his cold meat pies among the visiting fox-hunting fraternity – the pies were a favourite dish served at high teas after a long day's hunting. Adcock decided to market his pies in London, which proved to be a huge success. By 1840 the increased demand allowed Enoch Evans to set up a rival business in the Beast Market, which is now Sherrard Street, and the popularity of the Melton Mowbray pork pie began to grow. These hand-raised pies are uniquely rounded, made from the finest British uncured pork, and encased in rich and crunchy pastry. Dickinson and Morris, who run Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe in Nottingham Street are the last remaining firm in Melton to bake the authentic pies on their shop premises. The bakery was founded in 1851 and has since become a huge tourist attraction, with as many as 250,000 visitors each year.
• The medieval heart of old Chesterfield in Derbyshire is the narrow-laned area known as the Shambles. The word "shambles" comes from the Old English "shamel", which means a bench or a stall, and in medieval Chesterfield this was the area where the butchers prepared and sold meat from such "shambles". The narrowness of the streets also kept the shops cool in the days before refrigeration, and prevented direct sunlight from reaching the meat, helping to preserve it in saleable condition.

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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-West

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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 Scotland

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  A Taste of Wales