Sam Bilton Allie Pino and Neil Buttery are back with a brand new season exploring the culinary alphabet. This time it’s the letter ‘C’. In the first episode of this season our team had free reign to explore whatever took their fancy.

Sam opens with carbonado, diving into its rich history and cultural associations. Allie follows with carrots, exploring their meanings, myths, and surprising journeys through food history. Neil brings things to a close with cabinet pudding, a comforting and curious dish that rounds the conversation off rather nicely.

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Sources/Useful Links

Carbonado

1. Modern Cookery for Private Families - Eliza Acton (1845)
2. Cooking and Dining in Tudor and Early Stuart England by Peter Brears (2015)
3. Mots de table, mots de bouche: dictionnaire étymologique et historique du vocabulaire classique de la cuisine et de la gastronomie by Claudine Brécourt-Villars (1996)
4. Kettner’s Book of the Table - E. S. Dallas (1877)
5. Gargantua And His Son Pantagruel by Rabelais (1534)

Carrot

1. Vegetable Gardening the Colonial Williamsburg Way: 18th-Century Methods for Today’s Organic Gardeners - Wesley Greene (2012)
2. Do carrots help you see in the dark? - Dr Emma Davies BBC Science Focus Magazine (2026)
3. Step by Step. London: Thornton Butterworth - Churchill, W. S. (1939)
4. Originally published as a collection of Churchill’s newspaper articles and speeches from the late 1930s, including his commentary on Nazi Germany and the use of reward and punishment, encapsulated in his metaphor of “the carrot and the stick.”
5. Good Things - Jane Grigson (2006)
6. The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy - Hannah Glasse (1747) Recipe: To Make a Carrot Pudding
7. An Anonymous Andalusian Cookbook of the 13th Century Translated by Charles Perry et al Recipe: Carrot Paste

Cabinet pudding

1. Neil’s Cabinet pudding recipe
2. The Philosophy of Puddings by Neil Buttery (2024)
3. The Pudding Book by Helen Thomas (1980)
4. Pride and Pudding by Regula Ysewijn (2015)
5. Eleanor Fettiplace’s Receipt Book by Hilary Spurling - my Lord Devonshire’s Pudding (1986)
6. Neil’s Spotted Dick recipe from his blog
7. Neil’s How to Steam a Pudding post on his blog
8. Neil on the BBC Travel Show talking about the history of puddings and sugar (UK only)