News article filed by BNP news team
Researchers at the University of Wales Institute in Cardiff have discovered ancient British recipes dating back 8000 years. Among the foods popular in Neolithic times are roast hedgehog, nettle pudding and fish-gut sauce. The oldest recorded of the foods is nettle pudding, which involved blending nettle leaves with barley flour, salt and water before they were added to stews as a form of dumpling.
Other food includes barley bread, which dates from about 5000BC and smoky stew, from 3000BC – this was a mixture of bacon, smoked fish, milk and cream.
Ancient peoples also developed the forerunner to food such as haggis and sausages, by stuffing a mixture of meat into an intestine. Fruit cakes came along in the Norman period.
The Welsh connection with the leek can be traced back to around 4000BC, as the Welsh people found them easier to grow in the poor soil than onions were.The diet of ancient Britons was believed to be healthier than the modern diet, as the people ate a lot of meat, leaves and berries, and the longer time taken to prepare and cook food meant that people did not overeat, so there were not the problems associated with obesity that there are with today’s junk-fuelled diet.
http://www.bnp.org.uk/news_detail.php?newsId=1712