SPALDING GENTLEMEN'S SOCIETY

Dr David Bostwick is a regular lecturer at the Society; which says it all. He is expert at combining serious learning with the pleasure that comes from being entertained. This time it was a well illustrated lecture about eating and drinking in the 16th and 17th centuries. It was what people of different social order ate and how they went about it; the tableware, the cutlery (as far as it existed) and the etiquette, (for those to whom it was important). For the well off, there was a huge variety of meat, game, poultry as well as red meat. It was a time when vegetables that today we take for granted were only beginning to appear. Potatoes were an expensive novelty. There was also much in the lecture that explained the reason certain foods were commonplace. For instance pies and pasties were created as a means of preserving meat while it was sent from one place to another. The crusts were not for eating they were just carrying cases. (Nowadays, perhaps justification for leaving the crust of a pork pie and eating only the meat? There is much more to learn from Dr Bostwick. He will come again.