 |  | | | Jane Austen - Dinner Parties | Monday 4 August 2003 | | |
"Invite him to dinner, Emma, and help him to the best of the fish and the chicken, but leave him to choose his own wife."
So advises Mr Knightley to Jane Austen's matchmaking heroine at the end of the first chapter of Emma. Of course Emma doesn't pay him any attention and so we end up with a tale of romantic misunderstandings and embarrassments that strike a chord with even the most modern readers today.
The food would have been a different story. During the Regency, dinner parties ranked first amongst all entertainments and a society hostess was expected to give a dinner party at least once or twice a week.
In the first of our new series on food and cookery as would have been familiar to Jane Austen and her characters, Anna McNamee went to met with the food historian and writer Hattie Ellis who agreed to experiment with cooking a whole fish, the recipe for which came from the cookbook of one of Jane's dearest friends, Martha Lloyd.
Try out the recipe for Salmon, Pike, Carps or Fresh Cod in Corbullion
'The Jane Austen Cookbook', published by the British Museum Press.
More Woman's Hour recipesDisclaimer
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