Competing Notions of ‘Good Food’

This three-part article series considers Florence White’s Good Food Registers (1934, 1935) and her 1936 Where Shall We Eat or Put Up? In England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. It argues that White’s importance extends beyond White’s cookery books and should take into account her food guidebooks that promoted establishments specialising in regional British cuisine. The Registers and Where Shall We Eat are important contributions to the canon of gastronomical literature because they challenged long-established standards of taste that privileged French haute cuisine over British food, French chefs over women cooks, and that often equated the adjective ‘good’ with ‘elaborate’ or ‘complicated’ when describing food. The first article in this series concerns Florence White’s background and her founding of the English Folk Cookery Association. It considers the cultural milieu that characterised London in the 1920s and 1930s when White relocated there and took up freelance journalism full time. It proceeds to discuss select London restaurants featured in Where Shall We Eat, especially Simpson’s-in-the-Strand and the London Tavern. The second article considers England’s Midlands, North, and South, focusing on inns, public houses, tearooms, and restaurants featured in Where Shall We Eat. The series concludes with a focus on Where Shall We Eat’s entries from Ireland, Wales, Scotland, and the Isle of Man. White was among the first food writers to consciously differentiate between and celebrate the distinctiveness of the Atlantic Celtic nations’ foodways.