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'Taste Of Empire' Shows Us The World In Our Kitchen Cupboards

Lizzie Collingham's new book takes 20 exemplary British meals, from plain stewed beef to an elaborate Christmas pudding, and uses them to illustrate the way food and empire are inextricably linked.

"To be a Victorian Englishman was to possess the power to eat the world."

One afternoon in 1748, the Latham family sat down to dinner. They ran a small farm in Lancashire, and their menu was satisfying — beef and vegetable stew, beer, doughy fruit pudding. They grew wheat and barley to make bread, their cows supplied them with milk and cheese, and from their crops (and the women's

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