At Eastgate in rural North Norfolk, Jane Steward is reviving the medlar, an old English fruit which was once Britain’s sweet treat. Her trees are alive with colour for much of the year: white and yellow flowers in the summer, green leaves that turn to gold and russet. Grafted onto quince A rootstock, and helped by local honey bees, these are trees with prolific fruit.

Alongside the Nottingham variety of medlars, Jane has established a national culinary collection on her six-acre smallholding. Varieties include Breda , Dutch, Westerveld, Macrocarpa, Royal, Bredase Reus, Flanders Giant, Iranian medlars. Her book on medlars will have over 30 recipes alongside a myriad of information on this forgotten fruit.

Dairy-free diets are now in vogue. Soya yoghurts, almond milk, coconut ice cream, and tofu are widely sold in supermarkets. Vegan cafés and restaurants are popping up everywhere. And there's plenty going on in the media too: as celebrities ditch the white stuff, scientists debate the impact of veganism on climate change.

It wasn't always like this. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, eating a plant-only diet was seen as a far more radical and counter-culture choice than it is today. At that time, even lacto-vegetarians—those who eat dairy and honey but no meat or fish—were on the fringes ("It felt like we were a different sect of people," said Mary McCartney, Paul McCartney's daughter, of her vegetarian family in the 1970s.)

Vegans were ahead of their time. They were inventive, resourceful and creative. They squeezed vegetable juices, creamed cashew nuts into 'cheeses,' poured tofu into blocks (you couldn't nip out to the grocers to buy a pack), mashed lentils into rissoles and stirred up everything from sugar-free puddings to soups and goulashes. What they came up with was an affordable way to eat healthy dairy alternatives, without the added chemicals, sugar, and salt, which are now so often added to the processed versions produced by major food manufacturers.

This book is a collection of recipes from this time and gives them a proper context, referring to the communities and households who created the recipes and what it was like for vegans back then.

Nuts - Growing and Cooking includes over seventy recipes from a spiced pecan and pumpkin salad, Christmas nut loaf to a walnut cake. Also included re storage and handling tips and ways to make your own nut products such as nut milks and nut butters.

Traditionally nut trees are planted for future generations but this book shows how you can have a harvest within a season, even in a small space.

Health wise, nuts are not so much a super as a wonder food, easy to store, and one of the most concentrated foods available; a tiny, but delectable package.

Marjory Szurko has written an account of the recipes she found, her wonderful recreation of the sweet dishes at events she ran at Oriel College, Oxford, and the history of the recipes. From Courtly Cuisine from the fourteenth century, through to Country House Confections in the early twentieth century, the reader will discover how to cook these rare sweets and recreate the past. Illustrated with photographs of the sweets and full descriptions of their unique tastes using the rare spices from the times; this is a book like no other on historical cookery. The authentic recreations of sweet dishes from historical recipes will make your mouth water.

At Eastgate in rural North Norfolk, Jane Steward is reviving the medlar, an old English fruit which was once Britain’s sweet treat. Her trees are alive with colour for much of the year: white and yellow flowers in the summer, green leaves that turn to gold and russet. Grafted onto quince A rootstock, and helped by local honey bees, these are trees with prolific fruit.

Alongside the Nottingham variety of medlars, Jane has established a national culinary collection on her six-acre smallholding. Varieties include Breda , Dutch, Westerveld, Macrocarpa, Royal, Bredase Reus, Flanders Giant, Iranian medlars. Her book on medlars will have over 30 recipes alongside a myriad of information on this forgotten fruit.

Dairy-free diets are now in vogue. Soya yoghurts, almond milk, coconut ice cream, and tofu are widely sold in supermarkets. Vegan cafés and restaurants are popping up everywhere. And there's plenty going on in the media too: as celebrities ditch the white stuff, scientists debate the impact of veganism on climate change.

It wasn't always like this. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, eating a plant-only diet was seen as a far more radical and counter-culture choice than it is today. At that time, even lacto-vegetarians—those who eat dairy and honey but no meat or fish—were on the fringes ("It felt like we were a different sect of people," said Mary McCartney, Paul McCartney's daughter, of her vegetarian family in the 1970s.)

Vegans were ahead of their time. They were inventive, resourceful and creative. They squeezed vegetable juices, creamed cashew nuts into 'cheeses,' poured tofu into blocks (you couldn't nip out to the grocers to buy a pack), mashed lentils into rissoles and stirred up everything from sugar-free puddings to soups and goulashes. What they came up with was an affordable way to eat healthy dairy alternatives, without the added chemicals, sugar, and salt, which are now so often added to the processed versions produced by major food manufacturers.

This book is a collection of recipes from this time and gives them a proper context, referring to the communities and households who created the recipes and what it was like for vegans back then.

Nuts - Growing and Cooking includes over seventy recipes from a spiced pecan and pumpkin salad, Christmas nut loaf to a walnut cake. Also included re storage and handling tips and ways to make your own nut products such as nut milks and nut butters.

Traditionally nut trees are planted for future generations but this book shows how you can have a harvest within a season, even in a small space.

Health wise, nuts are not so much a super as a wonder food, easy to store, and one of the most concentrated foods available; a tiny, but delectable package.

Marjory Szurko has written an account of the recipes she found, her wonderful recreation of the sweet dishes at events she ran at Oriel College, Oxford, and the history of the recipes. From Courtly Cuisine from the fourteenth century, through to Country House Confections in the early twentieth century, the reader will discover how to cook these rare sweets and recreate the past. Illustrated with photographs of the sweets and full descriptions of their unique tastes using the rare spices from the times; this is a book like no other on historical cookery. The authentic recreations of sweet dishes from historical recipes will make your mouth water.