The Workhouse Cookbook

Book excerpt: This wonderfully evocative read explores every aspect of life - and diet - in the workhouse. Including a complete reprint of the 1901 Manual of Workhouse Cookery, and with more than 100 photographs, recipes, plans and dietary tables, it is a shocking, surprising and utterly unique guide to one of the most notorious establishments of the past.The dark history of the institution - scandals, riots and, on occasion, the near starvation of the inmates - is explored in depth. With sections on subjects as varied as the special diets for children, the elderly and the sick, the treatment of troublemakers, life in the Scottish and Irish equivalents, and Christmas Day in the workhouse - including how to make Christmas pudding for 300 - this book will delight cooks, epicureans and lovers of history everywhere.