‘The Carp is a stately, a good, and a subtle fish, a fish that hath not (as it is said) been long in England’ Izaak Walton, The Complete Angler (1653)

In this episode I explore the history of carp in Britain, one of the most widely distributed freshwater fish of all the British species, with angler and author John Langridge.

By the seventeenth century carp recipes were frequently found in cookbooks of the period but it is seldom eaten now. As well as busting some myths about how the carp first came to Britain I try to find out why the carp leapt from the plate and back into the pond to become arguably the most popular coarse fish in the UK?

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Useful Links

John’s books Aphrodite’s Carp and Fishing for Spanish Barbel are available from Medlar Press.

Suggested Reading

* A Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle, by Dame Juliana Berners (1496)

* Natural history of British fishes by Frank Buckland (1883)

* The Accomplisht Cook by Robert May (1685)

* The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton (1653)

Don’t forget you can follow me on Instagram or Bluesky @mrssbilton or find out more about my work on sambilton.com.

A huge thank you to Thomas Ntinas of The Delicious Legacy for doing the sound mixing on this season of the podcast. Sound effects and music provided by Zapsplat and Pond5.

Comfortably Hungry is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

‘We do not know for how many millennia man has exploited the preservative properties of ice.’ Jill Norman in the introduction to Elizabeth David’s Harvest of the Cold Months (1996)

In this episode I’m joined by food historian, writer, photographer, and culinary practitioner Dr Nader Mehravari, to find out more about the yakhchals of ancient Persia and how they were used to make and store ice.

If you enjoyed the podcast you can become a paid subscriber to the Comfortably Hungry Substack (which means you’ll receive additional content) or show your appreciation by leaving a small, one off tip here.

Useful Links

You can follow Nader Mehravari on Instagram and find out more about his work with Persian food on his website.

Nader’s Faloodeh recipe on Serious Eats

Suggested Reading

Travels in Persia by John Chardin (a seventeenth century French born traveler who wrote about ice in Persia)

Harvest of the Cold Months by Elizabeth David (1996)

Don’t forget you can follow me on Instagram or Bluesky @mrssbilton or find out more about my work on sambilton.com.

A huge thank you to Thomas Ntinas of The Delicious Legacy for doing the sound mixing on this season of the podcast. Sound effects and music provided by Zapsplat and Pond5.

Comfortably Hungry is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Don’t miss the special episode on The Watercress Queen to celebrate International Women’s Day (8/3/26) - released on Thursday 5th March.

If you enjoyed the podcast you can become a paid subscriber to the Comfortably Hungry Substack (which means you’ll receive additional content) or show your appreciation by leaving a small, one off tip here.

Don’t forget you can follow me on Instagram or Bluesky @mrssbilton or find out more about my work on sambilton.com.

A huge thank you to Thomas Ntinas of The Delicious Legacy for doing the sound mixing on this season of the podcast.

Comfortably Hungry is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries curious yellowish-white waxen lumps encased in the remnants of wooden containers have been unearthed from Irelands peat bogs by turf cutters and farmers. Some specimens weigh several kilos. Many are thought to date back thousands of years to the Bronze age, when the people of Ireland buried supplies of butter.

Maeve Sikora, Keeper of Irish Antiquities and Isabella Mulhall Assistant Keeper of Irish Antiquities from the National Museum of Ireland (NMI) in Dublin join me in this episode to tell us more about bog butter.

If you enjoyed the podcast you can become a paid subscriber to the Comfortably Hungry Substack (which means you’ll receive additional content) or show your appreciation by leaving a small, one off tip here.

Useful Links

National Museum of Ireland in Dublin

Butter Museum in Cork

‘A History of Bog Butter in Ireland’ by Maeve Sikora and Isabella Mulhall in Irish Food History: A Companion (2025)

Don’t forget you can follow me on Instagram or Bluesky @mrssbilton or find out more about my work on sambilton.com.

A huge thank you to Thomas Ntinas of The Delicious Legacy for doing the sound mixing on this season of the podcast.

Comfortably Hungry is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In today’s episode we will be journeying back thousands of years to ancient Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. I will be exploring arguably the earliest beer culture in the world with Dr Tate Paulette archaeologist and Associate Professor of History at North Carolina State University. Tate is also the author of In The Land of Ninkasi: A History of Beer in Ancient Mesopotamia.

If you enjoyed the podcast you can become a paid subscriber to the Comfortably Hungry Substack (which means you’ll receive additional content) or show your appreciation by leaving a small, one off tip here.

Useful Links

In The Land of Ninkasi: A History of Beer in Ancient Mesopotamia by Tate Paulette (2024)

You can watch a short video from Yale University about Babylonian cooking over on YouTube.

There Are Rivers in the Sky - Elif Shafak (2025)

Don’t forget you can follow me on Instagram or Bluesky @mrssbilton or find out more about my work on sambilton.com.

A huge thank you to Thomas Ntinas of The Delicious Legacy for doing the sound mixing on this season of the podcast.

Comfortably Hungry is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In Episode 3 I discuss what borsch means to Ukrainians with activist, chef and author Olia Hercules who recently published her family memoir Strong Roots. We chat about how water has shaped Ukraine and why it is so important for this proud nation to reclaim their national dish.

If you enjoyed the podcast you can become a paid subscriber to the Comfortably Hungry Substack (which means you’ll receive additional content) or show your appreciation by leaving a small, one off tip here.

Useful Links

You can find out more about Olia and her events on her website and follow her on Instagram and Bluesky.

Olia’s books include:

* Strong Roots (2025)

* Home Food: Recipes to Comfort and Connect (2022)

* Summer Kitchens (2020)

* Kaukasis (2017)

* Mamouska (2015)

Chef Louis P de Gouy, quoted at the start of this episode, trained under August Escoffier and had a sterling career working in luxury hotels before becoming the in-house chef for Gourmet magazine. In his Soup Book was published posthumously in 1949, two years after his death.

Don’t forget you can follow me on Instagram or Bluesky @mrssbilton or find out more about my work on sambilton.com.

A huge thank you to Thomas Ntinas of The Delicious Legacy for doing the sound mixing on this season of the podcast.

Comfortably Hungry is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.