Traditional Foods of Britain
Barossa Food
Australian Regional Food Guide
Reviews by Barbara Santich
Laura Mason and Catherine Brown, Traditional Foods of Britain
(Blackawton, Totnes: Prospect Books, 1999) 416 pp., £19.50.
Anyone with an interest in, or even curiosity about, British foods and ingredients should
immediately order this essential reference book (or see that it's bought by a convenient library).
Based on the British segment of the Euroterroirs project, it has been described as the
"most complete investigation of British regional traditional food yet undertaken".
"Food", in this context, includes breeds of cattle, sheep and pigs (not all, but those that
are distinctly regional) together with fruits and vegetables, breads and cakes, confectionery and
condiments and beverages - Earl Grey tea and elderflower cordial as well as cider and ale.
Traditional Foods of Britain serves as a model of its kind, with research that is thorough,
meticulous and properly documented, conveyed to the reader in a simple, straightforward style - though
with occasional comments for the authors as, for example, when they emphasise the "fragility of many
of these emergent craft foods if their basis is not the life pattern of the community in which they are found".
What is surprising is the relatively recent origin of so many "traditional" foods - from
Patum Peperium ("Gentleman's Relish") to lemon curd to Double Gloucester cheese, all of which
evolved in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - precisely the period of colonisation of Australia.
Among livestock, Aberdeen Angus cattle and Large White pigs date, as defined breeds, from around the same time.
Laura Mason and Catherine Brown have uncovered and documented a fascinating wealth of detail in British foods.
For this we must thank Tom Jaine, of Prospect Books, the British Ministry of Agriculture being not
sufficiently interested in traditional foods to bother with publication.
Angela Heuzenroeder, Barossa Food (Kent Town: Wakefield Press, 1999), pp. xvi, 318, $39.95.
Writing with warmth, humour and genuine affection, Angela Heuzenroeder describes the Barossa food culture -
as it was perhaps more than it is, since one of her aims, she states, "is to help save some
excellent dishes that would otherwise have disappeared".
Her passion is partly fired by her realisation that many of the customary foods and traditions of
her own Barossa childhood were vanishing, fading away, overwhelmed by freezers, by convenience foods,
by food globalisation (Angela Heuzenroeder doesn't use this word, but it's what she means by "world food").
And yet these were foods full of flavour, rich in symbolism and tradition, undeserving of such a fate,
her particular favourites such as Hock Pudding, Dämpfkraut and Rote Grütze among them.
In Barossa Food Angela claims that the Barossa is possibly the only place in Australia
with a continuing regional cuisine, and Rote Grütze provides the perfect example.
This dessert is a localised version of a dish traditional to northern Germany, originally made
with groats (crushed oats or other grains) and red berries (which grew wild in the woods),
later with sago or tapioca (both from tropical plants, both apparently popularised around the end of the nineteenth century).
What makes the Barossa version unique is the substitution of red grapes (preferably ripe shiraz, advises Angela)
for the berries of the northern forests.
Naturally, it's a seasonal dish, appropriate to autumn (though with frozen grape juice it can be made any time of the year!).
She suggests it may have been as recently as the 1920s that the dish entered the repertoire of Barossa tradition,
which seems logical, though it also demonstrates how, in just a few generations, a dish can become timeless.
The sources for this book are both written — old manuscript recipe collections, accounts and
diaries of early settlers, historical statistics and other sources — and oral, interviews with
local ladies who remember clearly the customs of their childhood and with those who still practise them.
From such a base the narrative moves seamlessly from present to past and back again, from the back verandah
where Mona and Rhoda make their mettwurst and leberwurst to the "black kitchens" of the early settlers,
based on the models their ancestors would have known in their homeland.
One of the incidental pleasures of Barossa Food is the way it links language and cuisine,
almost unconsciously, emphasising the deep roots of both and their role as cultural bedrocks.
It's a fascinating story of the evolution of a kind of naturalised hybrid of Anglo and Germanic,
both in the written and spoken word and the products of the kitchen.
Nevertheless, language and cuisine come together as simple blends where each component retains
its individuality — English words alternating with German phrases in old recipe books,
English-style dishes appearing on the same table as German-style ones — rather than as new composites.
While I would have liked to know more in some areas (the origin of the name "Barossa", for example),
I was left wondering if the culinary experiences of the Barossa might not be repeated in other areas of
Australia where migrants have a strong and unified presence, even if their history is much more recent.
If the Barossa was able to retain both a distinct language and cuisine, then perhaps the New South Wales Riverina,
centred on Griffith, will be able to claim a distinct, Italian-inspired cuisine and culture.
What foundations, what critical mass and how many generations does it need?
Perhaps regionality in Australian cuisine is just beginning.
Sally Hammond, Australian Regional Food Guide (Sydney: J.B. Fairfax Press, 1999) 543 pp., $24.95.
Wine tourism is now well established in Australia, worth an estimated $500m annually.
Following close on its heels, food tourism — which might range from visits to marron farms to
take-home purchases of jam and olive oil to restaurant dining — is also advancing.
In response to this ever-increasing interest in what we eat and where it comes from, Sally Hammond
has compiled the first national directory of regional foods, festivals and speciality stores, based on
tourism information, reliable guidebooks and a huge amount of diligent research.
A source book for the gastrotourist, Australian Regional Food Guide lists gives details of
primary producers with farm gate sales, of processors and of specialist food shops in regional rural Australia.
"Regional" in this book is interpreted simply as grown or produced in the region;
it does not assume any historic tradition or cultural relevance.
Thus the regional foods of the Barossa range from dried fruits and egg noodles to liqueur chocolates and ice creams.
Information is arranged by states by tourism regions (which do not necessarily correspond to
locally promoted regions; the Adelaide Hills, for example, are treated as part of the larger Fleurieu Peninsula).
State sections begin with addresses for tourism information and listings of specialised books, magazines and websites;
for each region there is a map, followed by restaurant and accommodation listings, a diary of food and wine events,
then details of the foods of the region and where to get them — farm gate, factory or specialist retailer.
Scattered through the book are delightful tidbits — about the Scottish food of Maclean in northern
New South Wales, for example, or the story of Castlemaine Rock (an English-style sweet
developed during the goldrush days and appropriately golden).
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