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The earliest cooked food in Britain was meat roasted over flames, and gruels of grains, sometimes flavoured with vegetables and herbs. The first contact with spices was during the long Roman occupation, but when the Romans left and the Dark Ages cast their pall over Europe, the British returned to a less sophisticated style of food. The most monumental change came with the last successful invasion of these shores by the Duke of Normandy. As well as introducing new and more luxurious styles of cooking, the Normans also gave us many new words for food, for instance pork and beef. And after the Normans came the Crusaders who reintroduced spices to Britain and also brought with them sugar, dried fruit and rose water. Over the centuries, the rise and fall of a dozen empires and kingdoms have made their contribution to British food. For generations Britain has taken what has been offered, chewed it over and kept what it liked the most.

I hope you will be surprised at this book. When gathering material, I was certainly surprised many times. For instance, at how quickly foods which have been common for centuries can disappear. Why did we stop using rose water about 60 years ago, or flavouring our custards with bay leaf or orange? Is it a silly snobbishness that led to the virtual disappearance of the once envied British puddings based on breadcrumbs?

I hope you will use the recipes included in this book judiciously, altering the proportion of ingredients as it suits you – but without moving away from the spirit of the dish. Spirit seems to me to be the great link between the extraordinarily different styles of British food. Through this book we can follow in our predecessors' footsteps with respect and with the lightness of our own touch.

adapted from The Cooking of the British Isles by Glynn Christian

Text 2

COOKING ENCOUNTERS

Lillian loved best the moment before she turned on the lights. She would stand in the restaurant kitchen doorway, rain-soaked air behind her, and let the smells come to her – ripe sourdough yeast or garlic, mellowing as it lingered. Lillian breathed in, feeling the smells move about and through her, even as she searched out those that might reveal whether the new assistant chef was still double-dosing the curry in the dishes. She was. The girl was good enough with knives, but some days, Lillian thought with a sigh, it was like trying to teach subtlety to a thunderstorm.

Tonight was Monday, a cooking class night. Lillian's students arrived with a variety of motivations, some drawn by a yearning as yet unmet to hear murmured culinary compliments, others trying to find a cook rather than become one. A few participants who had been given the course as a gift, had no desire for lessons at all, arriving as if on a forced march to certain failure; they knew their cakes would always be flat, their cream sauces filled with small, disconcerting pockets of flour. And then there were those students who seemingly had no choice, who could no more stay out of a kitchen than a kleptomaniac could keep her hands in her pockets. They fantasized about leaving their corporate jobs and becoming chefs with an exhilarating mixture of guilt and pleasure. They always came early and stayed late. If Lillian's soul sought out this last group, it was only to be expected, but in truth, she found them all fascinating.

It was during her early years that Lillian discovered cooking. After her father left, housework became for Lillian's mother a travel destination rarely reached; laundry, a friend one never remembered to call. Lillian picked up these skills by following her friends' mothers around their homes, while the mothers pretended not to notice, dropping hints about bleach or changing a vacuum bag as if it were just one more game children played. Lillian learned, and soon developed a certain domestic routine. But it was the cooking that occurred in her friends' homes that fascinated Lillian the most – the aromas that started calling to her just when she had to go home in the evening.

Lillian liked thinking about smells. She often remembered the time Margaret's mother had let her help with a white sauce, playing out the memory in her head the way some children try to recover, bit by bit, the moments of a favourite birthday party. Margaret had pouted, because she was never allowed to help in the kitchen, but Lillian had ignored all twinges of loyalty and climbed up on the chair and stood, watching the butter melt across the pan like the farthest reach of a wave sinking into the sand. Then she gazed at the flour, at first a hideous, clumping thing destroying the image until it was stirred with Margaret's mother's hand over Lillian's on the wooden spoon when she wanted to mash the clumps, moving slowly, in circles until the flour-butter became smooth and until again the image was changed by the added milk. Each time Lillian thought that the sauce could hold no more, that it would break into solid and liquid, but it never did.

adapted from The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

4.1. In the first paragraph the writer implies that

A. the plainness of British food is its worst enemy.

B. British cooking has deservedly earned its unrivalled reputation.

C. embracing international food is a recent phenomenon in Britain.

D. British people are often ignorant about the origins of some popular foods.

4.2. Which of the following sentences is TRUE?

A. Britons refrained from using spices at the time of the Roman conquest.

B. During the Dark Ages British food lost some of its refinement.

C. The Crusaders were the first to flavour British food with spices.

D. The Normans did not influence the British diet in any significant way.

4.3. The author of the text

A. reviews a book discussing the quality of British food.

B. previews the content of his own publication on British food.

C. weighs different hypotheses about the origins of British food.

D. outlines historical research supporting his theories about British food.

4.4. The phrase "it was like trying to teach subtlety to a thunderstorm" used in the 1st paragraph implies that the assistant chef

A. lacked natural refinement in cooking.

B. felt overwhelmed by responsibility.

C. had a quick-tempered disposition.

D. served excessive portions of food.

4.5. When describing Lillian's students, the narrator mentions some people who

A. had been encouraged to join the course by Lillian's words of praise.

B. were promised a guaranteed improvement of their baking skills.

C. had been attracted by the prospect of receiving a complimentary gift.

D. were motivated by a vision of a revolutionary change in their lives.

4.6. After Lillian's father left,

A. Lillian's mother became negligent in her daily chores.

B. Lillian insisted on being instructed in some housework.

C. Lillian's friends started to ridicule her extraordinary sense of smell.

D. Lillian's friends' mothers used tricks to discourage Lillian from cooking.

4.7. In the last paragraph, we learn about

A. an incident that led to Lillian's first cooking failure.

B. Lillian's indignation over the way she was treated by Margaret.

C. an early attempt at cooking which Lillian found enjoyable.

D. Lillian's preparations for her friend's birthday party.