Victorian cuisine

[1] Pennell strove to recast the cult of domestic femininity, duly elevating cooking from the drudgery of bodily labor by encouraging women to become creative in the kitchen.

[1][2] With the new, positive view that “cooking was a high art practised by geniuses", middle and upper class Victorian women in began to express their culinary creativity for the first time, much as male artists had always been able to do.

[2] Many Victorian meals were served at home as a family, prepared by cooks and servants who had studied French and Italian cookbooks.

[2] The Victorian breakfast was usually a heavy meal: sausages, preserves, bacon and eggs, served with bread rolls.

Instead of cooks and servants, middle and upper-class women began to make complicated dishes themselves to impress family members and guests.

[6] Dinner was the most elaborate meal with multiple courses: soup, roast meats or fish, vegetables, puddings and sweets.

[7] A three course meal, for example, might begin with soups with fish, followed by meats, roasts or stews, then game and pastry, and ending with salads, cheese and liquor.

Later in the evening they would gather at farmhouses to eat fruit cake and drink junket—a mixture of raw milk, rennet and sugar.

[10] The foodways of different social classes in Victorian England feature in literary works by Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope.