Which foods in books made you hungry when you read about them?

[ABowlOfPorridge]

Heidi always made goat’s cheese and goat’s milk sound so good but I hated them when I finally got to try them as an adult.

The feast at the Beavers’ house sounded so good especially the marmalade roll.

Which literary culinary delights appealed to you?

There's a passage in What Katie Did at School where they describe a Christmas box sent from home. The box contains all sorts of paper parcels with home baking, dried fruits, etc. It is one of my absolute favourite pieces of writing and so evocative.

That’s the beavers from The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe btw.

There’s a bit in one of the Alfie books where they have a trifle. I remember thinking it sounded wonderful as a child. I do quite like trifle now but never had one that quite lived up to the description.

Anything Guido Brunetti's wife makes in the Donna Leon books!

Enod Blyton's The Rat-a-Tat Mystery when they got hot sausage rolls for breakfast!

Oh god yes, I constantly re-read that. One of my favourite books when I was around 10-11. She made jumbles sound so exciting!

Sandwiches and fruit cake in the Famous Five ( I think) Enid Blyton books.

The slabs of fruitcake the Famous Five took on picnics 😋

I think it was Heidi that talked about toasted cheese, always sounded lovely. When my ds was very little we used to read the teddy bears picnic which was beautifully illustrated, he always paused at the page withthe picnic spread out and pretended to eat the bits of food off the pates.

Just the word ‘sandwich’ gets me at it. Makes me think of a lovely white bread sandwich, cut into four triangles, with something like egg mayo and salt and vinegar crisps. Or wafer thin ham. Or corned beef and Branston pickle. All laid out on a blanket in an area of the Trough of Bowland where we used to picnic in the 70s, on a sunny Sunday afternoon with a warm gentle breeze ☺️

In one of the original Ian Fleming Bond books he was eating fresh stone crabs with melted butter and drinking pink champagne

I know. I really wanted to try those jumbles .

How on earth did Enid Blyton make boiled eggs with a twist of salt sound like the best thing ever? I’ve had plenty of boiled eggs in my time but none have ever tasted half so good as they sound in her books.

Mr Toad’s bubble and squeak between two plates.

Bunter’s roast duck and green peas.

You’re all making me hungry!

I just remembered the pieces of bear wrapped around an apple from Prince Caspian. Did anyone else crave that?

In the Dorothy Edwards 'My Naughty Little Sister' stories, most food sounds so lovely, but especially the trifle with the spongy bits. I hate sponge in trifle, but I find my mouth watering every time I read it!

I can't think of any adult books but Enid Blyyon had some lovely food descriptions in her stories. I remember the Magic Faraway Tree had pop biscuits and something with toffee in it and the land of goodies definitely made my mouth water as a child.

OH MY GOD when I saw the title of this thread I came on to say Heidi, toasted goat’s cheese! It wasn’t the kind of thing you could buy in the 80s when I was a kid so I had to wait years to try it and it really was as good as I’d hoped. Still my absolute fave.

I read a lot of children’s classics as a child but somehow I’ve never gotten around to reading the Katy books. I’ll have to read those soon so that I can enjoy that scene.

The imaginary food in The Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton. The children have google buns and pop biscuits amongst other things, I really wanted to try them!

Also the Chalet School books when they visited patisseries for coffee and cakes.

The meat pie in ‘Danny Champion of the World’. With eggs inside dotted around like treasure.

Rationing was in force when the earliest Famous Five books were published, so those massive farmhouse teas would have been outside the experience of her readers. You got one egg a week, and your mother might use the family eggs for cooking, so you wouldn't often see an actual boiled egg, or dish of ham and eggs. Otherwise you got powdered eggs, and had it scrambled.

Also the Chalet School books when they visited patisseries for coffee and cakes.

Though the first time I tried coffee with featherbeds of whipped cream, it didn't live up to expectations.

The feasts in the Harry Potter books always got my mouth watering.

How could I forget that pie? Danny was one of my favourite books as a child and I craved that pie so badly. I got to try Gala pie and it was nice but it didn’t quite live up to the pie I imagined from the book.

In Swallows and Amazons I think I remember them always having seed cake. And yes Heidi with her grilled cheese by the fire.