Intro -- Title Page -- Dedication -- Epigraph -- Contents -- Prologue -- The Staff of Life -- Prehistory -- 1 The Kittiwake at Danebury -- Roman Britain -- 2 Conspicuous Culinary Consumption -- Liquamen -- The Raider Centuries -- 3 An Art in Peril -- Medieval Britain -- 4 'Newe Conceytes' -- 5 Feasts and Fasts -- 6 Hospitality -- Pastry -- The Tudors -- 7 Strange Vegetables, New Tastes -- 8 'Sugar Never Marred Sawce' -- 9 The English Huswife -- Blessed Puddings -- The Stuarts -- 10 Mad Master Cooks -- The Commonwealth and Protectorate -- 11 Unhappy Times -- The Restoration -- 12 A La Mode -- 13 Chefs and Sweethearts -- Ice -- William and Mary, Anne, and The Hanoverians -- 14 Human Nature -- 15 Good Gravy and Hooped Petticoats -- 16 Brave Stomachs -- Drunkenness -- 17 Taste -- The Long Regency -- 18 Mad for Innovation -- A La Russe -- 19 Painting the Lamb, Roasting the Mutton -- The Victorians -- 20 The Great Laboratory -- Poverty's Larder -- 21 The Flight to Gentility, or Living for Appearances -- The Twentieth Century -- 22 Raging Inequalities and the Taste of War -- 23 Fleeting Fortunes and Discontented Domestics -- Waste the Food and Help the Hun! -- 24 Learning to Walk, Loving to Run -- 25 'What I Myself Have Learned …" -- 26 'Cuisine Poseur' -- A Note on Measures -- Sites and Houses -- Plate Section -- Acknowledgements -- Author's Note -- Bibliography -- Footnotes -- Notes -- A Note on the Author -- By the Same Author -- List of Illustrations -- Praise for Taste -- Imprint.