D England . focus on English fare . at an old-established hotel in an east coast resort there is an unusual notice on the bottom of the menu card : epicures agree that English food well cooked is the best in the world . for this reason , this hotel specializes in the finest English cooking , and nothing canned or twice cooked is ever served . an admirable and unexpected statement which is to be backed by a twelve-month campaign to promote British food , launched by the British farm produce council . it includes staging four large-scale exhibitions at major urban centres throughout the United Kingdom , twelve displays in stores in regional towns and joint ventures with such organizations as the townswomen &apos;s guilds , the gas council , electricity boards and the Scottish , Welsh and Northern Ireland development boards . the first large-scale show is to be held in London from 11-16 September . the council &apos;s chairman , Mr W R Trehane , commenting on the campaign , said : British shoppers should certainly be well aware of the quality food that comes from their own farmers and growers by the end of the year . and the farming community should be especially pleased that its products are to get such a tremendous boost just where it would be most effective - on the customer &apos;s doorstep , he added . the British farm produce council was launched in the autumn of 1960 . its basic aims are to tell the buying public more about British food , how to choose and how to cook it , and to let farmers and growers know that the shopper thinks about their products . the council has plenty to go upon for the range of English foods is amazingly wide . a restaurant in the West End offered its customers a choice of no fewer than 500 recipes of old English fare , and these were selected from as many as fifteen hundred recipes . the first menu included a milk soup from Sussex , a star gazy pie from Cornwall , herrings , beef olives from Cheshire with dumplings and green peas , and a Welbeck pudding from Nottinghamshire . these merely touch the fringe of the possibilities , as was evident when a folk cookery exhibition was staged , for there were to be seen eatables with the most delightful names . they included Yule cakes eaten in Yorkshire between Christmas day and new year &apos;s day ; Sedgmoor Easter cakes ; Tyneside Yule Doos , childish figures supposed to represent the infant Jesus , and made by Tyneside mothers for their children on baking day ; checky pigs from Leicestershire ; lardy cakes and wafers for mothering Sunday , from Devizes ; Devonshire applecake ; Bakewell tart from Derbyshire ; Deddington pudding pies ; Cornish black cake ; burying cake , from an old English recipe ; Yorkshire oatcake , made in strips ; Melton Mowbray pork pie ; gilt gingerbread from Bute ; parkin from Yorkshire ; Grasmere gingerbread , which looks like shortbread ; Congleton gingerbread with rice-paper underneath ; and Coventry God cake , which dates back to the fourteenth or fifteenth century , given when a godchild was christened or made its first communion . it is a pastry cake after the style of a Banbury cake and in the shape of an isosceles triangle . it is slashed across the middle and ornamented with sugar . one of the most delightful exhibits ever put on was seen in the Gothic Hall of Lacock Abbey , four miles from Chippenham . local dishes from all over the British Isles were displayed in rich profusion , and some of the most interesting were seen in the making . dainties still made today , like Welsh bakestone loaf , Selkirk bannocks , and Dublin barm brack , were shown in company with more strictly period exhibits such as Queen Henrietta Maria &apos;s morning broth - for in Charles 1 &apos;s day they took chicken broth for breakfast - and salmagundi , a favourite supper dish in the eighteenth century and obviously the ancestor of hors d&apos;oeuvre . dishes similar to those displayed must have been cooked and eaten centuries ago at Lacock Abbey . some ancient kitchen implements belonging to the abbey were also on show . a great pestle and mortar seen were said to have been there since the time of Sir William Sharington , the first lay owner of Lacock Abbey after the dissolution . a venerable mould , in the form of an elephant , was used to make a cake exhibited . among loans from elsewhere were a set of fine moulds for gingerbread from the pump room at Bath . gingerbread figures properly gilded , proved that the moulds are as good today as ever they were . river crayfish , boiled as scarlet as any lobster , came from the river in the grounds of Lacock Abbey . the late Miss F White , who founded the English folk cookery association prepared a unique gastronomic map . she used to go about the country collecting information concerning food much as Cecil Sharp used to go about in his work of research for folk-songs and dances , and she plotted her discoveries on a gastronomic map . looking over this one noticed such names as Coventry godcake mentioned above , and stuffed chine at Clee in Lincolnshire ; and found that Melton Mowbray is as famous for curd cheese-cakes as for its pork pies . stuffed chine , by the way , is a famous old dish at Clee for Trinity Sunday , the custom being for a chine of bacon stuffed with herbs to form part of the dinner . the curd cheese-cakes of Melton Mowbray are a great dish for Whit-Sunday . it is said that there are enough of these cakes made for the festival to pave the whole town . every county is , rightly , jealous of its folk-cookery tradition , and there is no doubt that the north of England is strong in this respect . a list of inns , hotels , and restaurants where good local dishes could be enjoyed mentioned for Yorkshire alone : Barnsley chops , curd cheese-cakes , oven cakes , sly cakes , Doncaster butterscotch , oatmeal fritters , bilberry pies , Yorkshire batter pudding , brandy snap , spiced bread , Sheffield polony , potted shrimps , frumenty , Wensleydale cheese , apple cheese-cakes , primrose vinegar , fish pie , turf cakes , bakestone cakes , parkin , and gingerbread . references were made to the Yorkshire practice of eating cheese with cake , and there was a consensus of opinion that ham and eggs as served in the county is a succulent dish . Scotland is too often neglected or overlooked , and so it is good that a little book of Scottish recipes has been compiled primarily for visitors to Scotland , lost Scots and others . the recipes range from soups , puddings and pies , cakes and shortbreads , to many other intriguing items such as Parlies or Scottish parliament cake , Athol Brose , Cranachan or Cream-Crowdie , and tatties an&apos; herrin&apos; . it has been asked : what are the predominant characteristics of Scottish cookery ? the answer : simplicity , good sense and an instinct for dietetic values , and what more could one ask ? one of the most historic of country dishes is dumplings . one recalls that celebrated farmhouse dinner described in Cranford , which Miss Matty only half-enjoyed because the delicate young peas would drop between the prongs of the old-fashioned two-pronged forks , and gentility forbade her to imitate her host and shovel them up on the blade of her knife . Mr Holbrook , her old suitor , was right to be unceremonious with his peas , and he was right also , in his blunt way , about the use of dumplings to stay the appetite . when I was a young man , we used to keep strictly to my father &apos;s rule , no broth , no ball : no ball , no beef , and always began dinner with broth . then we had suet puddings , boiled in the broth with the beef ; and then the meat itself . if we did not sup our broth , we had no ball , which we liked a deal better ; and the beef came last of all , and only those had it who had done justice to the broth and the ball . being a Cheshire man , Mr Holbrook was probably unacquainted with the Norfolk dumpling , which goes one step further in the direction of economy by dispensing with the suet . this recalls that brave and manly eighteenth-century Norfolk incumbent , the Rev James Woodforde , whose diary has only one rival , that of Pepys . on one occasion , after a good dinner and a bad night , he noted : mince pye rose oft . if this is not literary style - the expression of meaning with a minimum of words and a maximum of effect - one would be interested to learn of a better example . Woodforde &apos;s life was humdrum in some respects , but it had its difficulties . of these , along with the smooth , he made the best , taking life as it came , without repining or vain hopes , and contriving to get a good deal of satisfaction for himself and others out of it , not least from his food . his meals were like himself , good and honest , and one quotes this typical meal : 1st course : boiled tench , pea soup , a couple of boiled chicken and pigs s face , hashed calf &apos;s head , beans , and roasted rump of beef with new potatoes etc . 2nd course : roasted duck and green peas , a very fine leveret roasted , strawberry cream , jelly , puddings etc . dessert - strawberries , cherries and last year &apos;s nonpareils . English cooking at its best . Anne Morris . mushrooms - wild and tame . the steak is excellent , but the mushrooms do n&apos;t taste like mushrooms ! this was the comment , heard during dinner in a restaurant , which sent me off in search of Psalliota Campestris - the common white field mushroom - and the reason why mushrooms do n&apos;t taste like mushrooms . the first thing I discovered was that the common white field mushroom is common no longer . in fact , it is in danger of disappearing completely . present-day farming methods are to blame - or so I was told by a local farmer , who explained that all the mushrooms had disappeared from his home field since he had treated the grass with a chemical fertilizer . a botanist at our local museum agreed with the farmer . he said , however , that this was not the only reason why there were so few mushrooms in our fields today . mushrooms , it seems , like old pastures , where the soil has lain undisturbed for decades . such pastures are becoming increasingly rare . the preference is for ley farming in which grasslands are ploughed and re-seeded every few years . this process breaks up a complex underground rooting system , which takes many years to re-establish . yet another contributory factor is the disappearance of the horse from our farms . indeed , if it were not for the numerous riding schools and racing stables throughout the country , mushrooms would be an ever greater luxury than they already are . for , even in these enlightened days , mushroom growers have not found a perfect substitute for stable manure on which to base their hot-beds . even so , cultivated mushrooms are booming . their popularity has increased enormously during the last ten years or so . for instance , in one small part of Nottinghamshire alone there are eight flourishing mushroom farms , and , according to a grower I talked to , they have no difficulty in disposing of their crops . from that , it would appear that mushroom-growing is an attractive proposition . alas , there are snags . the first is that it is expensive . the cardboard baskets , for instance , in which the grower packs his mushrooms for the wholesalers , cost him sixpence each ! in the off season - the summer months - he may only receive two shillings a pound which , when the costs of spawn , manure , etc , heat , labour , and depreciation of buildings , etc , are taken into account , does n&apos;t leave a very great margin of profit ! moreover mushrooms are a very risky crop . they may appear in abundance - or they may not appear at all . or they may become diseased . if that should happen the entire crop is lost and the beds must be rested for some months to clear the infection . but why do n&apos;t they taste like mushrooms ? I asked the grower . he laughed . I suppose you mean , why do n&apos;t they taste like field mushrooms , he said . and the answer to that is , they are a different variety . you do n&apos;t expect a Cox &apos;s orange pippin to taste like a Grannie Smith , do you ? it &apos;s the same with mushrooms . even in the wild varieties there are at least two well-marked kinds . 