Don't blame the cook!

Everyone who cooks knows that cooking is an unpredictable business.  A faithful recipe we have cooked time and time again to perfection doesn't come out as we expected it to.  You take your eye off the clock for one minute and a burning smell begins to emanate from the oven.  You take a beautifully-risen cake out of the oven, and when your back is turned it sinks.

But just sometimes it is not the cook's fault!

In Charles Dickens's novel Bleak House (1852-1853), a searing indictment of the English judicial system, the cook at the Sol's Arms, a tavern in the vicinity of the London courts, is unfairly maligned.

Who Stole the Tarts?

The King and Queen of Hearts were seated on their throne .... In the very middle of the court was a table, with a large dish of tarts upon it: they looked so good, that it made Alice quite hungry to look them - "I wish they'd get the trial done," she thought, "and hand round the refreshments!" (Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll)

A few weeks ago I popped along to the British Library to see their foyer exhibition of Alice in Wonderland which is on until 17th April - http://www.bl.uk/events/alice-in-wonderland-exhibition. The exhibition - which is well worth a visit - opened in November 2015, to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the publication of Lewis Carroll's novel.  Featuring the original manuscript and hand-drawn illustrations, the exhibition goes on to look at later editions - and illustrations - of the children's book, and to consider the way the novel has been reimagined and reappropriated in different societies and cultures.

Midnight Feasts

When we went upstairs to bed, [Steerforth] produced the whole seven shillings' worth, and laid it out on my bed in the moonlight, saying: 
'There you are, young Copperfield, and a royal spread you've got.'

David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

As a child I longed to go to boarding school.  Not because I hated my family, but because of the books I read about boarding school life.

The ones that stand out in my memory are the Malory Towers and St Clare's series by Enid Blyton. The varied personalities of the schoolgirls - who always included at least one 'foreigner' for added glamour - coupled with the eccentric teachers, created a tantalising world that was  so far removed from my Devon schooldays.  And the 'fun and mischief' they got up to - as it says on the blurb of my ancient copy of Third Year at Malory Towers - was equally appealing to my diligent and well-behaved nine year-old self;  I would never dare to be naughty, but I could live vicariously through Blyton's creations.

David Copperfield's Batter Pudding

In my last post, about eating other people’s food, I wrote about the episode in David Copperfield where the young David ‘loses’ his meal to the hungry waiter in the Yarmouth inn.  As well as drinking David’s ale and eating his chops, he also dives eagerly into his ‘batter pudding’:

'Why, a batter-pudding,' [the waiter] said, taking up a table-spoon, 'is my favourite pudding!  Ain't that lucky?  Come on, little 'un, and let's see who'll get most.'
The waiter certainly got most.  

Eating someone else's food

When we had done, [the waiter] brought me a pudding, and having set it before me, seemed to ruminate, and to become absent in his mind for some moments.
'How's the pie?' he said, rousing himself.
'It's a pudding', I made answer. 
'Pudding!' he exclaimed.  'Why, bless me, so it is!  What!' looking at it nearer.  'You don't mean to say it's a batter-pudding!'
'Yes, it is indeed.'
'Why, a batter-pudding,' he said, taking up a table-spoon, 'is my favourite pudding!  Ain't that lucky?  Come on, little 'un, and let's see who'll get most.'
The waiter certainly got most.   David Copperfield, Charles Dickens

Why is it so often the case that what someone else is eating is so much more enticing than what is on our own plate?   I have vivid memories of primary school lunches when I would have done just about anything to eat my friend's white sliced bread sandwiches and chocolate bar rather than my Mum's home-made soup, though nowadays I think I got the better deal.

And how much more difficult it must be if you have nothing to eat, but all around you is food, as is the case with the waiter in Charles Dickens's David Copperfield (1849-50).