S2 E6 B is for Beef Wellington, Brains & Bovril

In which Alessandra makes a shocking confession!

Welcome to Episode 6 of Season B. The theme is ‘Meat’ and Sam, Neil and Alessandra get beefy with three choice nuggets of fleshy goodness, looking at Beef Wellington, Brains and Bovril. Don’t get the meat sweats please! You can download the episode here or find it on your preferred podcast platform.

Don’t forget the next episode is the Listeners’ Choice. Please send your suggestions (with a reason why you’ve chosen it) to aisofrapplepod@gmail.com. Your deadline is 21st May!

Links & Further Reading

• Did Sam win the awards for Best Audio at the Fortnum & Mason Awards?

• Allie will be taking part in the online conference an ONLINE conference on 23rd and 24th August 2025 marking the 100th anniversary of MR James A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories talking about food and the supernatural: https://romancingthegothic.com/2025/01/06/cfp-for-a-warning-to-the-curious-ghostly-supernatural-and-weird-tales/

• Follow Serve it Forth history festival on Instagram @serveitforthfest

• The Leeds Symposium of Food History and Traditions facebook page

Beef Wellington

• Manuale de cuoco e del pasticciere III by Vincenzo Agnoletti (1834) (Italian)

• Paddington Takes The Test by Michael Bond (1999)

• Julia Child cooks beef wellington on The French Chef

• Betty Crocker’s Hostess Cookbook (1967)

• Irish Traditional Food by Theodora Fitzgibbon (1984)

• Fashionable food: seven decades of food fads by Sylvia Lovegren, (1995)

• The French Menu Cookbook by Richard Olney (1970)

• You can read more about the Waterloo banquets on the Apsley House and Wellington Arch blog here and here.

• Lines of Wellington trailer

• Read about how beef wellington was used as a murder weapon in Australia.

Brains

• English Food (Third Edition) by Jane Grigson (1992

• The Complete Nose to Tail: A Kind of British Cooking by Fergus Henderson (2012)

• Jane Grigson’s Brains in Black Butter recipe on Neil Cooks Grigson

• Good Food by Ambrose Heath (1932; contains brain and tongue pudding recipe)

• Neil’s blog post about cooking snipe with recipe

Bovril

• Vril: The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1871)

• Shackleton Bovril advert: http://www.tommyspackfillers.com/gallery/medpopup.php?imageNo=1085

• How the British empire spells Bovril: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O828155/how-the-british-empire-spells-print-dolman-ernest/

• My Bones and My Flute by Edgar Mittelholzer (1955)

You can follow A is for Apple on Instagram and Bluesky

Sam Bilton also hosts the Comfortably Hungry Podcast and is the author of First Catch Your Gingerbread, Fool’s Gold: A History of British Saffron and The Philosophy of Chocolate. You can find her on Instagram and Bluesky

Dr Neil Buttery also hosts the British Food History Podcast and is the author of A Dark History of Sugar, Before Mrs Beeton: Elizabeth Raffald Britain’s Most Influential Housekeeper as well as Knead to Know: A History of Baking and The Philosophy of Pudding. You can find him on Instagram and Bluesky

Dr Allie Pino hosts the Fear Feasts Podcast with Vanessa Baca and is the co-author of A Gothic Cookbook. You can find her on Instagram and Bluesky