every food in: The Magic City by Edith Nesbit

The Magic City by Edith Nesbit

Published 1910

This is unrelated to her Bastables or Psammead series. It’s an unusually set book for her other writing as well - so far as I’ve been rereading, Nesbit tends to place her characters in upper middle-class settings for the time period, but this book takes Philip from his cottage by the sea to an extremely upper class house he feels very uncomfortable in, and deals with Philip’s struggle to accept his new guardian and his stepsister after his sister’s marriage. Unsurprisingly for a book about a young boy doing basically … whatever he wants in 1910, this book is full of buns, cakes, stick candy, and ices. Philip eats sugar constantly.

Nothing too odd for the modern palate except “captain’s biscuits” - I won’t lie, I had no idea what those were. Foods of England describes them as thin and dry and helpfully provides an Eliza Acton recipe. I think I’ll pass on road testing this one. Eurgh.

• Coconut milk

• Coconut ices

• Coconut ice, peppermint cream, apples, bread and butter, sweet milk

• Cherry pie, custards in cups, cold sausage, cold toast, cheese, lemon cheese-cakes, jam tart, butter

• Bread and cheese

• Meat pasties, red gooseberries, a stone bottle of ginger beer, a slice of soda cake, two farthing sugar sticks

• Bread and milk

• Cocoa and date

• Plum cake, bread and butter, rice pudding, prunes, toffee, ice

• Captain’s biscuits

• Buns and jam tarts

• Pineapples

• bacon