A is for Apple: An Encyclopaedia of Food & Drink

Sam Bilton Allie Pino and Neil Buttery are back with a brand new season exploring the culinary alphabet. This time it’s the letter ‘C’. In the first episode of this season our team had free reign to explore whatever took their fancy.
Sam opens with carbonado, diving into its rich history and cultural associations. Allie follows with carrots, exploring their meanings, myths, and surprising journeys through food history. Neil brings things to a close with cabinet pudding, a comforting and curious dish that rounds the conversation off rather nicely.
Don’t forget to email us at [email protected] or tag us on Instagram or BlueSky if you have any suggestions for future episodes. You may also want to subscribe to the A is for Apple Substack where we publish recipes and extra audio content.
Sources/Useful Links
Carbonado
Modern Cookery for Private Families - Eliza Acton (1845)
Cooking and Dining in Tudor and Early Stuart England by Peter Brears (2015)
Mots de table, mots de bouche: dictionnaire étymologique et historique du vocabulaire classique de la cuisine et de la gastronomie by Claudine Brécourt-Villars (1996)
Kettner’s Book of the Table - E. S. Dallas (1877)
Gargantua And His Son Pantagruel by Rabelais (1534)

Carrot
Vegetable Gardening the Colonial Williamsburg Way: 18th-Century Methods for Today’s Organic Gardeners - Wesley Greene (2012)
Do carrots help you see in the dark? - Dr Emma Davies BBC Science Focus Magazine (2026)
Step by Step. London: Thornton Butterworth - Churchill, W. S. (1939)
Originally published as a collection of Churchill’s newspaper articles and speeches from the late 1930s, including his commentary on Nazi Germany and the use of reward and punishment, encapsulated in his metaphor of “the carrot and the stick.”
Good Things - Jane Grigson (2006)
The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy - Hannah Glasse (1747) Recipe: To Make a Carrot Pudding
An Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook of the 13th Century Translated by Charles Perry et al Recipe: Carrot Paste

Cabinet pudding
Neil’s Cabinet pudding recipe
The Philosophy of Puddings by Neil Buttery (2024)
The Pudding Book by Helen Thomas (1980)
Pride and Pudding by Regula Ysewijn (2015)
Eleanor Fettiplace’s Receipt Book by Hilary Spurling - my Lord Devonshire’s Pudding (1986)
Neil’s Spotted Dick recipe from his blog
Neil’s How to Steam a Pudding post on his blog
Neil on the BBC Travel Show talking about the history of puddings and sugar (UK only)

Welcome to Episode 7 of Season B. This is a Listener’s Choice ep, and things get hot, messy and monstrous as Sam, Neil and Alessandra look at Boiling, Bloody Mary and bay leaves.
Things mentioned in this episode
Sam Bilton wins at the Fortum & Mason Awards
Museum of Royal Worcester project wins at the British Library Food Season Awards
Sam’s black pudding episode on Comfortably Hungry
Neil is appearing at the Chalke Festival on 27 June
Follow Serve it Forth History Festival 18 October on Instagram @serveitforthfest

Links & Further Reading

Boiling
Acton, E. (1845). Modern Cookery For Private Families. Quadrille.
Beeton, I. (1861). The Book of Household Management. Lightning Source.
Davidson, A. (1999). The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford University Press.
Grigson, J. (1992). English Food (Third Edit). Penguin.
McGee, H. (1984). On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen (1st ed.). Allen and Unwin.
Smith, D. (1998). Delia’s How to Cook Book 1. BBC Books.

Bayleaf:
Culpeper’s Herbal (I’ll find a link late)
What Is a Bay Leaf, Exactly? – Atlas Obscura https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-a-bay-leaf
Pliny Natural History iv: Books 12-16 https://archive.org/details/L370PlinyNaturalHistoryIV1216/page/n391/mode/2up?q=laurel
Ovid Metamorphosis https://www.gutenberg.org/files/21765/21765-h/21765-h.htm

Bloody Mary:
Why Is There an Entire Fried Chicken on My Bloody Mary?: An exploration of outrageous garnishes and the drink’s over-the-top evolution. The Spruce Eats
The Tomato in America by Andrew F. Smith (1994): A rich history of the tomato- from suspicion to Bloody Mary staple. Essential reading for any cocktail historian.
James Bond’s Other Drink: Long before Vesper, Bond was sipping Bloody Marys- shaken, not stirred, of course. Bormioli Luigi
Bloody Mina Gothtail: A Gothic twist on the classic- dark, dramatic, and dangerously drinkable. Instagram Recipe

Welcome to this bonus episode of A is for Apple: An Encyclopaedia of Food & Drink.
Last episode the theme was Meat, and as usual, the three of us nattered away for a bit too long and some of our conversation was edited out for time. One of these things was the part of Neil’s section on brains and the BSE crisis.
We’re busy behind the scenes getting the listener's choice episode ready for you, but hopefully this little snackette will keep you going.

You can follow the A is for Apple Podcast on Instagram and Bluesky

Sam Bilton also hosts the Comfortably Hungry Podcast and is the author of First Catch Your Gingerbread, Fool’s Gold: A History of British Saffron and The Philosophy of Chocolate. You can find her on Instagram and Bluesky

Dr Neil Buttery also hosts the British Food History Podcast and is the author of A Dark History of Sugar, Before Mrs Beeton: Elizabeth Raffald Britain’s Most Influential Housekeeper as well as Knead to Know: A History of Baking and The Philosophy of Pudding. You can find him on Instagram and Bluesky

Dr Allie Pino hosts the Fear Feasts Podcast with Vanessa Baca and is the co-author of A Gothic Cookbook. You can find her on Instagram and Bluesky

Welcome to Episode 6 of Season B. The theme is ‘Meat’ and Sam, Neil and Alessandra get beefy with three choice nuggets of fleshy goodness, looking at Beef Wellington, Brains and Bovril. Don’t get the meat sweats!
Don’t forget the next episode is the Listeners’ Choice. Please send your suggestions (with a reason why you’ve chosen it) to [email protected]. Your deadline is 21st May!
Links & Further Reading
Did Sam win the awards for Best Audio at the Fortnum & Mason Awards?
Allie will be taking part in the online conference an ONLINE conference on 23rd and 24th August 2025 marking the 100th anniversary of MR James A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories talking about food and the supernatural: https://romancingthegothic.com/2025/01/06/cfp-for-a-warning-to-the-curious-ghostly-supernatural-and-weird-tales/
Follow Serve it Forth history festival on Instagram @serveitforthfest
The Leeds Symposium of Food History and Traditions facebook page

Beef Wellington
Manuale de cuoco e del pasticciere III by Vincenzo Agnoletti (1834) (Italian)
Paddington Takes The Test by Michael Bond (1999)
Julia Child cooks beef wellington on The French Chef
Betty Crocker’s Hostess Cookbook (1967)
Irish Traditional Food by Theodora Fitzgibbon (1984)
Fashionable food: seven decades of food fads by Sylvia Lovegren, (1995)
The French Menu Cookbook by Richard Olney (1970)
You can read more about the Waterloo banquets on the Apsley House and Wellington Arch blog here and here.
Lines of Wellington trailer
Read about how beef wellington was used as a murder weapon in Australia.

Brains
English Food (Third Edition) by Jane Grigson (1992
The Complete Nose to Tail: A Kind of British Cooking by Fergus Henderson (2012)
Jane Grigson’s Brains in Black Butter recipe on Neil Cooks Grigson
Good Food by Ambrose Heath (1932; contains brain and tongue pudding recipe)
Neil’s blog post about cooking snipe with recipe

Bovril
Vril: The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1871)
Shackleton Bovril advert: http://www.tommyspackfillers.com/gallery/medpopup.php?imageNo=1085
How the British empire spells Bovril: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O828155/how-the-british-empire-spells-print-dolman-ernest/
My Bones and My Flute by Edgar Mittelholzer (1955)

You can follow the A is for Apple Podcast on Instagram and Bluesky
Sam Bilton also hosts the Comfortably Hungry Podcast and is the author of First Catch Your Gingerbread, Fool’s Gold: A History of British Saffron and The Philosophy of Chocolate. You can find her on Instagram and Bluesky
Dr Neil Buttery also hosts the British Food History Podcast and is the author of A Dark History of Sugar, Before Mrs Beeton: Elizabeth Raffald Britain’s Most Influential Housekeeper as well as Knead to Know: A History of Baking and The Philosophy of Pudding. You can find him on Instagram and Bluesky
Dr Allie Pino hosts the Fear Feasts Podcast with Vanessa Baca and is the co-author of A Gothic Cookbook. You can find her on Instagram and Bluesky

Welcome to this bonus episode of A is for Apple: An Encyclopaedia of Food & Drink.
Last episode had the blue theme, and Neil chose to look at blue cheese, in particular Stichelton, which is made on the beautiful Welbeck Estate in rural Nottinghamshire. Neil spoke to Joe Schneider, who makes this delicious, unique farmhouse cheese. Neil cut the interview down to 6 minutes or so, but here it is in full.
They talk about how one gets into farmhouse cheesemaking, the importance of consistency and the best places to buy Stichelton as well as many other things.
A big thank you to Thomas Ntinas for his sound engineering support.
Things mentioned in today’s episode:
Stichelton website
The Welbeck Estate
Welbeck Farm Shop
Neal’s Yard Dairy
Chorlton Cheesemongers

You can follow the A is for Apple Podcast on Instagram and Bluesky
Sam Bilton also hosts the Comfortably Hungry Podcast and is the author of First Catch Your Gingerbread, Fool’s Gold: A History of British Saffron and The Philosophy of Chocolate. You can find her on Instagram and Bluesky
Dr Neil Buttery also hosts the British Food History Podcast and is the author of A Dark History of Sugar, Before Mrs Beeton: Elizabeth Raffald Britain’s Most Influential Housekeeper as well as Knead to Know: A History of Baking and The Philosophy of Pudding. You can find him on Instagram and Bluesky
Dr Allie Pino hosts the Fear Feasts Podcast with Vanessa Baca and is the co-author of A Gothic Cookbook. You can find her on Instagram and Bluesky