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Peter Brears’ interest in food history developed in the 1970s and '80s, when he purchased a number of period recipe books. They described dishes of a completely different calibre. Once the moulds etc. they described had been bought through the antiques trade, he started cooking, re-creating the dishes as accurately as possible. The results were far better than the long neglect of their recipes had suggested. Serving multi-coursed dinners to a dozen or more food historians confirmed his findings, high-class high-Victorian food was, like the culture that had created it, full of enthusiasm for great flavours, textures and, most particularly visual appeal. One reason for the current lack of knowledge and appreciation of the finer dishes of the Victorian period is the secrecy in which they were originally prepared. The highly-trained cooks kept their hand-written recipe books away from prying eyes, and often carried out their most complex practices in private. In addition, the kitchen department of all large country houses was almost monastically separated from both family members and most of the servants. It was physically contained within its walls, except for the serving hatch opened only at meal-times, and, since its occupants were at their busiest when others were eating, the kitchen staff rarely met their fellow servants. Following the closure of almost every great country house kitchen on the outbreak of war in 1939, this secrecy continued. The cooks and their staffs were dispersed and the culinary equipment and plant either put into long-term storage or sold off for scrap. The whole of the servants' quarters, formerly a scene of bustling activity, were now deserted and left to rot or serve as cold, damp stores for domestic junk. Since the traditional green baize door had always provided a socially robust barrier beyond which neither family nor guests should ever penetrate, the kitchens were conveniently forgotten. It was only in the 1970s that, most likely taking a lead from popular television series such as Upstairs, Downstairs, that owners such as the Marquis of Bath at Longleat started to open their historic kitchens. The visitors found their first sight of this long-forgotten, hidden world to be completely fascinating. In many ways its functional character was more comprehensible and approachable than that of the magnificent state rooms above. Life led in vast gilt-furnished art-galleries was beyond most people's comprehension, but cooking was. As a result, more stately homes started to open their below-stairs areas as displays.In the 1970s Peter Brears restored the 1680 kitchen at Clarke Hall, Wakefield, in Yorkshire, back to its original state, but as a working kitchen, not as a display. Using a combination of archaeological and archival sources, he designed, commissioned and purchased all the equipment in authentic style and construction, before putting it into practical use. Cooking over charcoal stoves, roasting before open fires and similar operations provided a uniquely informative learning experience, one now called 'experimental archaeology'. This approach, along with the academic study of food history, remained in its infancy, however. Its vast primary sources in the form of printed books and manuscripts, surviving equipment and buildings, along with the memories of the last generation of country house servants, were still largely neglected. Since then Brears has restored over thirty historic kitchens. The brief has always been directed towards restoration and display, but these projects also gave him unique access to their documentary and physical resources. Brears was able to make accurate measured drawings of all manner of kitchens, their fixtures and utensils, and gather a wealth of related information regarding their use and products. Considering their essential role in sustaining life, the study of the history of food and kitchens has never received the detailed attention they deserve. One common mistake has been to consider country house kitchens to be mere cottage kitchens writ large. This is comparable to assuming that a great engineering works that manufactures cars is just an up-scaled version of someone tinkering with their vehicle in a back yard. Every aspect of their operation, including financial control, investment in plant, professional administration, training, technological expertise, internal security, and range, scale and quality of product is completely different. The country house kitchens were professional commercial kitchens operating in much the same way as those of modern hotels and restaurants, not domestic living rooms in which cooking was only one of many multifarious activities. In the following chapters this approach has been adopted as far as possible by supplementing the purely historical evidence with numerous scale drawings of structures, fixtures and utensils, made over the course of over thirty years of fieldwork. These are described in the various departments and rooms in which they were originally found, and are provided with authentic period recipes to not only show how they were used, but also to enable them to be used today; the proof of the evidence should be in the eating. The limitations of this policy are obvious. Due to the differences in the availability of certain foodstuffs, the scale of the catering and the changes in equipment between a great country house and a modern domestic kitchen, many dishes are now no longer practical. However, many others are, and are well worth reviving not only to enlighten our concept of the high-class cookery of the period, but because they are good to eat.For centuries the food cooked in our country houses was the finest available, its variety then being greatly expanded by the investment in new technology, enlarged professional staffs and international trade of the Victorian period. This great culinary tradition then started to wain around the time of the First World War, and finally collapsed with the outbreak of war in 1939. Now, over eighty years later, it remains forgotten, even those who experienced its final stages having passed away. Hopefully this book will go a little way in reviving interest in it, and encourage further study, appreciation and enjoyment of all its diverse aspects.
