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
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