To this is added her personal opinion; thus, the medieval chapter ends "The battles of Crécy and Agincourt would scarcely have been won had they been fought by soldiers from a destitute nation.

[5] She adds that another passion is field sports, "providing food and controlling pests and vermin", and that this runs like a "silver thread" through the book.

The diet she describes included rabbit, deer, carp farmed in ponds, eels, salmon, poultry, sheep, cattle, cheese, pigs, bread, onions, parsnips, carrots, and beans, washed down with wine and beer.

Spices such as pepper, cinnamon, and ginger were costly, and not used to try to make rotten meat acceptable; Dickson Wright suggests they more likely masked the salt used to preserve food.

Dickson Wright describes in detail the diet and lifestyle of the Tudor Kings; under the influence of Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII drank Spanish sherry, imported oranges, and planted salad gardens.

My Lord of Devonshire's Pudding is made of sliced white bread, dates, raisins, marrow or butter, cream, eggs, cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar—a recipe that Dickson Wright specially likes.

James I brought a new approach to English food in the Stuart era, introducing Scottish customs of boiling puddings in a cloth, cold-smoking fish, and baking biscuits such as shortbread.

Roasting and baking became less laborious with Georgian era innovations in fireplace and oven design, approaching a kitchen range; the poor prepared their pies and took them to the bakery to be cooked.

In the 19th century, Marie-Antoine Carême, who had worked for the Czar of Russia, introduced the modern system of separate soup, fish, meat, and dessert courses à la russe.

Soyer set up soup kitchens in Dublin during the Great Famine of Ireland, and improved hospital catering with Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War.

Richard D'Oyly Carte staged operettas and founded the Savoy Hotel in 1889, introducing the rich to haute cuisine, cooked simply.

George Orwell's 1937 The Road to Wigan Pier describes the food of the poor, who lived on "white bread and margarine, corned beef, sugared tea and potatoes.

After the war, many suggestions for a "perfect meal" were made, varying wildly from pizza to curry, chow mein or roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

The reviewer remarked Dickson Wright's mention of badger hams in the West Country pubs of her childhood, and the nine sorts of tripe in Dewsbury market, "including penis and udder".

[20] She describes Dickson Wright's approach as "a firmly chronological line across the landscape of culinary history, pausing at intervals to examine objects of interest.

"[20] Fay Maschler, writing in The Spectator, calls the book a "less stringent, more capricious, generously illustrated account", giving the reader "a magical sense of almost having been there".

"[21] In Maschler's view, Dickson Wright brings the book to life when she speaks from personal experience to compare "the taste of swan, moorhen and rook",[21] or writes of her delight in "the unexpectedly white meat of beaver tail",[21] or recalls from her childhood "when local sturgeon were for sale, rough boys sold live eels along Hammersmith Mall".

[21] David Evans, reviewing the book for The Independent, calls it "deliciously rich and moreish", commenting that "what might have been a dry academic exercise is enlivened by her eccentric, opinionated interjections (if you can ignore the slightly snobbish tone)."

Cooke argues that Dickson Wright is "as particular as she is greedy", and "gruesomely snobbish", out of touch with "other people", preferring therefore the overindulgent Georgians who could afford a suitable retinue of servants.