Recipes from the classic period of English cookery, approximately 1660 to 1890, as a handy compendium for the curious, saving them the need to own a complete shelf of antiquarian books. Soup was never intended as a stand-alone dish. At its first showing it was merely the broth from a stew: the meat served in one dish, the liquid in another - we are familiar with the idea from the French 'pot-au-feu' or 'bouillabaisse'. And the very word 'soup' referred to the 'sops' of bread put at the bottom of the dish to soak up and thicken the liquor. Eileen White has selected texts that explains the place of soup in our diet, and which offer recipes which can be tried today (and just a few that are better to read than to cook).Eileen White is an historian who has worked mainly in the fields of early English drama and the history of food.

Programmed cell death (PCD) plays pivotal roles in tumor progression, cancer therapeutics and resistance of tumor cells to therapy. This book examines the mechanisms involved in mediating and regulating PCD in cancer. It also provides a detailed indication of the utility of PCD in cancer therapy. The book features chapters on the current and future of RNA interference in therapeutics and Pathways involved in Stem Cell Survival and Death.

Each essay is fully illustrated from the original books and sources, taking the study of cookery books to a new level from the point of view of bibliography and contextual history. Particular stress may be laid on Professor Peter Meredith's chapter which analyses the linguistic make up of medieval recipes, tying them into the language of miracle plays and other forms of literature. In like manner, the chapter on illustrations in early British cookery books goes where few have ventured before. Ivan Day's published works are few, but he is an important figure in this discipline. He points to significant links between British and Continental practice, for example in the depiction of the art of carving, as well as in the construction of pastry shapes, moulds and pies, which take the bibliography of the cookbook to new heights.

The papers include discussions of the archaeological record; Anne Rycraft on the medieval diet and markets; Peter Brears on York guilds and on shopping in York and its supply of the hinterland; Eileen White on the domestic record of the 16th and 17th centuries; Laura Mason on the diet of the working class in Victorian York and on regional foods.

English cookery is always in search of its identity. This book offers some clues in respect of particular dishes or types of food. Not that these are the only markers of Englishness, but taken altogether they do point up some of our most enduring culinary characteristics. None more so than the pudding, and Laura Mason does a good job of account for the rise of the boiled pudding wrapped in its floured cloth that so typifies the glory-days of Victorian cookery. The blancmange, too, now something that strikes horror in the breast of the upstanding Englishman, might wave a flag for the wonders of the pink and jellified mould that so handsomely adorned the tables of our Edwardian grandparents. Olios and fricassees are indeed of foreign origin - not British at all - but Gilly Lehmann shows how their adoption and adaptation in seventeenth and early eighteenth century kitchens lays bare the true nature of English cookery (not actually very good). Soups, broths and pottages are shared by all nations of the world but each has taken its own particular line with this form and Eileen White describes the development of this essential preliminary to dinner more clearly that hitherto.