Land of Milk and Honey: The Story of Traditional Irish Food and Drink [Paperback]

Brid Mahon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1998 | ISBN-10: 1856352102 | ISBN-13: 978-1856352109 | Edition: 2nd

An account of Irish foods throughout the centuries and their special associations with wakes, weddings and the calendar feasts of the year. With frequent references to sources from literature and folklore, Brid Mahon charts the culinary history of Ireland.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Bookish cooks and culinary historians will welcome Mahon's collection of every imaginable folkloric and literary reference to the hunting, growing, cooking, distilling, serving and consuming of fish, meat, poultry, grains, vegetables, herbs and dairy products in Ireland. Mahon (While Green Grass Grows: Memoirs of a Folklorist) writes about food with a spare sensuality that can make the mouth water, whether she's cataloguing the hams, puddings, sausages and stews made by farmer's wives after a pig-killing or quoting a 17th-century text describing the "great platters of boiled flesh" served at a wake. She is less successful, though, in organizing her material in a cogent and engaging manner. Each chapter contains all references to a particular food type, and once grouped, the information does not develop as much as it accrues. Transitions, such as, "It is but a small step from curds to cheese," highlight the problem. Clusters of folkloric tales are sometimes linked so perfunctorily ("An earlier tale tells.... Yet another story tells.... Still more wonderful are the stories of.... An equally delightful story....") that the reader may look upon the arrival of the next delightful tale with some trepidation. The ingredients in this book are excellent, but they might have proved more satisfying had they been cooked a little longer.

Copyright 1998 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 162 pages
• Publisher: Irish Amer Book Co; 2nd edition (September 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1856352102
• ISBN-13: 978-1856352109
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,452,721 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #91 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > European > Irish

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Satisfactory compendium of lore, but less than thorough, March 16, 2006

By 

John L Murphy "Fionnchú" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Land of Milk and Honey: The Story of Traditional Irish Food and Drink (Paperback)

Brid Mahon, a folklorist who has also written a memoir of gathering tales "While Green Grass Grows," obviously is steeped in the lore and stories that attest to the varieties of food & drink in both ancient and more recent Irish times. She veers, however, from her focus: half of the book's a recounting of whenever eatables & drinkables pop up in mythological and historical records; half a miscellany of how such foods and drinks were gathered, kept, and consumed. I was expecting more depth about how, say, mead was invented, but in that account all Mahon really noted were occasions of its consumption. The book's rather scattershot, but nonetheless enjoyable. Each chapter contains literary and popular citations for food & drink and while brief, the book's sufficient to whet your mental and perhaps physical appetite for a story too often neglected: how the Irish kept themselves going for centuries by imaginatively (or perhaps not always!) surviving on the bounty from land and, less often than might be expected, the sea.

One example: I tried, as one suspicious of most vegetables (having grown up with typically boiled foodstuffs!), to convince my more food-loving wife that Mahon, by quoting "potato and other vegetable" meant at a meal potato therefore was a vegetable, but she did not fall for this--although I was raised to think that not only potatoes but corn counted for the veggie!