Pigging Out the Edwardian Way

How did the well-off eat in Edwardian England? Meatily, according to this piece on Times Online. Here’s a sample from a week of Edwardian eating:

Breakfast at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand: Smoked haddock, scrambled eggs, kippers, cold cuts, one roast pheasant, fruit, bacon, sausages, devilled kidneys, scones and kedgeree. … Lunch at Rules, Covent Garden: Oysters, foie gras terrine, roast cod with asparagus, mutton hotpot, pink Yorkshire rhubarb and clotted cream. … Dinner party at home with several guests, including Roy Hattersley: Melon glacé, mock turtle soup, sole au gratin, crab and asparagus mousse in aspic, boiled mutton with caper sauce, quail pudding, punch romaine.

Sounds awesome, right? Well apparently this sort of diet is pretty much impossible for a human body to adapt to. In just a week, the author had put a riotous strain on his body:

As for Dr Petty, he was not amused. He found that although I had put on only a pound in weight, my body fat had increased by an extraordinary 10 per cent over the week, with corresponding declines in muscle mass and water content. My haematology showed excess blood urea due to an excess of protein and dangerous signs of dehydration from the excess booze and lack of water. And my cholesterol, from an already worrying 5.8 (modern quacks like to see a result below 4) had in seven days skyrocketed to 6.6! On a diet like that, he reckoned, a chap with my heredity would do well to live till he was 42.

A show chronicling the gluttony will be shown on BBC, called “Edwardian Supersize Me.”

Appetite for excess [TimesOnline.co.uk]