This week the Supersizers went Regency. Now I thought I knew nothing about the Regency period except that the Prince Regent was Hugh Laurie in Blackadder and his father was the King George of The Madness of King George fame, but I was embarrassed to find it was also the time of Jane Austen. I really should have remembered that from my English degree. Oh well.
“Late 1700s to early 1800s, wasn’t it?” said my husband, who didn’t go to university. The Regency period was indeed 1789 to 1821. Smart arse.
For once Giles Coren and Sue Perkins played brother and sister rather than husband and wife. Giles was a dandy and Sue was, of course, in want of a husband.
I’m not sure whether I’ve just become more tolerant thanks to the hideous confections this show has subjected us to over the weeks, but the Regency diet didn’t seem that bad. Breakfast featured toast, jam and marmalade, while lunches and dinners often consisted of roast beef and yorkshire pudding, Welsh Rarebit, apple pie. Oh and jugged hare. I’d heard of jugged hare, but I never imagined that it was actually hare cooked in a jug. It sounds like one of Baldrick’s recipes.
Of course, old Georgie Porgie – the Prince Regent – didn’t eat such “plain” food. No, he liked a pigeon pie with the pigeons legs sticking out … for breakfast.
In fact, when the Regency folks wanted to impress, they steered clear of sturdy English food and went for poncey French stuff instead. Like pyramids of crayfish in jelly, chicken with hogs’ tongues, pigs’ head stuffed with all sorts of crap and piece montee (enormous wedding cake-like confections made entirely of sugar).
When Giles and Sue went to London to try and find Sue a husband, they stopped off for a meal of stilton with maggots, which last week would have horrified me, but having seen The F Word (in which Tom Parker-Bowles travelled to Sardinia to sample Casu Marzu – pecorino with maggots) I wasn’t fazed. Although I could have done without knowing that when Moll Flanders author Daniel Defoe was served the stilton, it was surrounded by so many maggots that he was given a spoon to aid in shovelling them down. Yum.
Inevitably, Giles and Sue ended their Regency adventure with a ball, which ended with Sue being dragged along the ground by a suitor, begging him to take her on, eight pounds a year, truly unladylike behaviour and all.
Much like the rest of the series, it was all highly entertaining and surprisingly informative. Now when I think of the Regency period, I’ll be able to reference Hugh Laurie, Jane Austen AND … er … Daniel Defoe and his maggots. So that’s something.
To read a review of The Supersizers Go… Seventies, go here.
To read a review of The Supersizers Go… Wartime, go here.
To read a review of The Supersizers Go… Victorian, go here.
To read a review of The Supersizers Go… Restoration, go here.
To read a review of The Supersizers Go … Elizabethan, go here.
