Hedgehog For Dinner?
A recent discovery by UWIC researchers puts roast hedgehog, nettle pudding and smoky stew - dishes that can be traced back more than 8,000 years - among the oldest recipes in Britain.
Ruth Fairchild, senior lecturer at the Centre for Food Science & Technology said that however off-putting the Neolithic dishes might sound, many were forerunners of the food we enjoy today.
Ruth and her team spent two months researching culinary records dating as far back as 6,000 BC, to find the definitive list of the oldest recorded recipes. The study revealed nettle pudding to be the oldest recipe, closely followed by smokey stew, meat pudding, barley bread and roast hedgehog, pancakes, pottage (cawl), garum and liquamen (fish sauces), in mitulis (Roman sea mussels) and pastries (stuffed date and elderberry patina).
The research was commissioned by UKTV Food to celebrate the start of a new series; The Peoples Cookbook. The programme, fronted by Antony Worrall Thompson, gives an insight into the tastes of the UK, thousands of years ago, and explores how some of the dishes that have been passed down through the generations, have evolved into modern staples.
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