The Little White Horse | Elizabeth Goudge (Food Reference List)

The food from The Little White Horse, written in 1946 by Elizabeth Goudge, often finds itself on ‘the top food lists in children’s literature’. While the book is well worth a read, if you’re wanting the list quick, here is the reference list. If you happen to be a Harry Potter fan though, take the time to read it, as it inspired JK Rowling.

Peppermint

Chop

Greens

Baked potato

Rice pudding | A dish made from rice mixed with milk and sometimes cinnamon and raisins

Dainty biscuits with sugar flowers some round with a pink sugar rose and others long shaped with a green shamrock. Try Food Adventures in Fiction’s recipe with proper sugared flowers.

‘There was homemade crusty bread, hot onion soup, delicious rabbit stew, baked apples in a silver dish, honey, butter the colour of marigolds, a big blue jug of warm mulled claret, and hot roasted chestnuts folded in a napkin.’

Glass of milk, warm and sweet

Sausage

‘Digweed brought in as well a huge home-cured ham, brown boiled eggs, coffee, tea, new-baked bread, honey, cream with a thick yellow crust on the top of it, freshly churned butter, and milk so new that it was still warm and frothing.’

Hare jugged in port wine

Bacon

Bunches of onions and herbs

Veal pie | veal, ham, hard boiled eggs, parsley, chopped onion with pastry on top pinched with flowers and leaves. Food adventures in fiction got the recipe for this veal and ham pie spot on!

Loaves of bread

Syllabub | Used twelve eggs, pint of cream, cinnamon | Oxford Dictionary describes it as “A drink or dish made of milk (freq. as drawn from the cow) or cream, curdled by the admixture of wine, cider, or other acid, and often sweetened and flavoured.”

Plain junket with a dash of brandy and nutmeg on top | Plain junket is a type of simple pudding made of water, milk, sugar, salt, vanilla and, traditionally, a junket tablet. A junket tablet was usually made from rennin, a ferment that was found in stomach’s of cows. However nowadays (to make cheese), this is made commercially and called rennet. These tablets when added (apparently there’s a correct process) turns the milk to a solid form like custard.

Coddled egg

Brown boiled eggs, coffee, milk, honey, butter, home made bread — tea at old Parsons home

Biscuits, radishes, bull’s eyes (caramel creams), bright pink boiled sweets

Pink iced fairy cakes, foaming mug of milk, candied cherries

Tea at Lovedays: tea, bread, butter, honey, cream, golden brown parkin

Pork chops, onions, baked apples, custard

Roasted pigeon, apple dumpling, pot of cream

Roast beef, gravy, Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, greens, horse radish sauce, apple tart, sugar, cream, cheese, plum cake and beer

Beefsteak and kidney pudding

Ham

Leg of mutton

Ham sandwiches, jam sandwiches, sausage rolls, apple turnovers, gingerbread, saffron cake, sugar biscuits, radishes, milk.

Hard boiled eggs

Loaves of bread

Jugs of cider

‘Chunks of meat on the spits’

fish

vegetables

apples

buttered scones with thick yellow butter

Mulled claret

Plum cake

Saffron cake | A type of sweet bun that’s made of yeast and flavoured with saffron, currants and spices like cinnamon or nutmeg

Cherry cake

Iced fairy cakes

Eclairs

Gingerbread

Meringues

Almond fingers

Rock cakes

Chocolate drops

Parkin | a soft cake  made of oatmeal and black treacle.

Cream horns | puff pastry cones filled with whipped cream.

Devonshire splits | Little buns that are split and filled with jam and cream

Cornish pasty

Jam sandwiches

Lemon-curd sandwiches

Lettuce sandwiches

Cinnamon toast

Honey toast

Tomato soup

Steamed soles served with grapes

Roasted pheasants with bread sauce and browned crumbs

Roasted saddle of mutton and redcurrant jelly

Ginger souffle

Cheese straws

Raspberry ices

coffee

Celery soup

Salmon mayonnaise

Fried chicken

Six foot tall white iced wedding cake decorated with sugar flowers, fruit, birds, stars, butterflies, bells, and a ‘tiny sickle moon and a tiny sun enclosed within a silver horseshoe’

sugar biscuit

iced bun

candied cherries

crystallized ginger

sugared almonds

chocolates

lemonade

sherbet

champagne