This second chapter of Agatha’s autobiography is considerably thinner on food references than the first.
That surprised me to realize, since she spends a fair amount of it in France, but I guess the food did not make such an impression on her English tastebuds. Her most vivid memory seems to be how a French waiter “used to carve us the most glorious mice out of radishes.” She also recalls how at a spa they had to drink “glasses of nasty water.” Her only real treat was sucre d’orge—literally barley sugar, but probably consumed in the form of a candy cane—while her mother indulged in aniseed, “which I could not bear.”
A fonder memory is of garden parties, which she deduces to have taken place in August since strawberries and cream were never on the menu. Instead they were treated to:
nougat, pink and white
lemonade
ices: strawberry, vanilla, pistachio, orange-water, raspberry-water
biscuits
cream cake
sandwiches
éclairs (again!)
peaches
muscat grapes
nectarines
Agatha also reminisces about child-rearing practices, how “there was a tendency to keep young children on milk and starch far too long.” However, being of a robust constitution and healty appetite, she herself developed an early appetite for steak and “under-done roast beef.”
Probably the most notable food memory in this chapter, though, is her first reference to Devonshire cream. “Sometimes one ate it on bread and sometimes with a spoon… There is no doubt about it, my favourite thing has been, is, and probably always will be, cream.” We will hear more, much more, about Agatha’s favorite tipple in the next chapter.
This chapter, alas, gives very little scope for recipe-making, so I’m concluding with her love of foraging blackberries and “green apples,” which from context I think means underripe apples rather than, say, Granny Smiths. Since this chapter is so much about the pleasures of childhood, I think the right way to honor it is to sit outside and chomp away at a nice green apple, preferably one you’ve found lying forgotten on the ground, still good enough to eat.