Nice read on food and class and how they intertwine and impact each other in Britain, although some paragraphs, pages and chapters are a bit enumerative... long long lists.
Things I learned: Aga is a household brand for kitchen stoves, parkin is a kind of cake, posset some sort of drink with hot milk and something alcoholic.
Dinner parties moved back and forth in time. First a sign of wealth, then something to eschew because too bourgeouis.
It is a linguistic tick that survives to this day. Southerners and posh northeners have 'lunch' and 'dinner'. Northeners, particularly the working classes, still have 'dinner' between noon and 2 p.m. and 'tea' in the early evening (and perhaps a 'supper at night). For a long time, children had 'dinner'. In a Victorian house of a few servants the mistress might eat her 'luncheon' while the children and servants had their dinner. It might be the same food or, more likely, a rehashing of the employers' beef or mutton from the previous night or weekend, served with milk to drink and a solid pudding.
High tea keeps to an early evening time of 5 or 6 o'clock; and everybody sits up at the table – the adjective 'high (probably) distinguishes it from low drawing room armchairs. Although high tea is associated with the North of England and Scotland, here not all teas are 'high'; it is likely that whatever is on the table is your 'tea' (even without the drink); and that the meal you have had in the middle of the day is called 'dinner', just as it would for our medieval ancestors.
Compared with the lionized British beefy dinner, supper was always a lighter and more sophisticated meal.
