Hardcover. Tan cloth binding with black title on the spine and front board.

We provide an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available

• Note: This book carries a £5.00 discount to those that subscribe to the F.B.A. mailing list

For conditions, please view our photographs. A nice clean rare copy from the library gathered by the famous Cambridge Don, computer scientist, food and wine connoisseur, Jack Arnold LANG. Jack founded the Midsummer House, Cambridge’s paramount restaurant. This dining experience is hidden amongst the grassy pastures and grazing cattle of Midsummer Common and perched on the banks of the River Cam. 

A glorious banquet of ideas and appetites, Cakes & Ale invites you to dine with a late Victorian sensibility that is at once exacting and warmly human. This is a gastronomic essay collection that pairs recipes and anecdotes with a historian’s eye, turning banquet culture into a living conversation about hospitality, memory, and the pleasure of good company.Edward Spencer’s complete miscellany-interwoven recipes and culturally attuned observations-offers more than a cookbook; it is a mirror of nineteenth century England and its European culinary traditions. The writings move from practical kitchen craft to luminous reflections on dining as social ritual, crafting a narrative that nourishes both casual readers and classic literature collectors. The book’s enduring charm lies in its intimate voice, its curious appetite for the origins of taste, and its playful yet precise chronicles of home life, meals, and gatherings.Historically significant. It preserves a vanished world while inviting fresh resonance with modern kitchens and reading rooms alike. Cakes & Ale remains a timeless invitation to remember, taste, and imagine.