'The British have a long affinity with spices, particularly when it comes to celebrating key festivals during the year like Christmas. Food historian Sam Bilton will show us in our workshop,  how to make some British festive classics, like her Great Aunt Eliza’s Victorian Christmas pudding (Stir Up Sunday takes place on 22nd November this year), and will explain the origins of some familiar festive foods like gingerbread and cook a medieval (and vegetarian) alternative to the famous mince pie. We’ll round off the evening with a glass of lambs wool.'

Recipes will be shared exclusively with registered participants.

Birgitte

Sam Bilton

 ... has been intrigued by food history ever since her grandmother gave her a battered copy of Mrs Beeton’s Cookery Book. Inside this book was a collection of handwritten recipes dating from around 1871 collated by her grandmother’s Great Aunt Eliza. This little book would spark an interest in historical food which began as a hobby but would lead to a Masters in Culinary Arts and a career as a food historian, author and podcaster.

Sam’s first book on the history of gingerbread won a World Gourmand Cookbook award in 2021. She has also published Fool’s Gold: A History of British Saffron (Prospect Books, 2022); The Philosophy of Chocolate (British Library Publishing, 2023) and Much Ado About Cooking, in collaboration with Shakespeare’s Globe (October 2025).  Sam is the editor of Petits Propos Culinaires (PPC) an international journal on food, food history, cooking and cookery books to the end and is a frequent contributor to national magazines, food festivals, television and radio.

Sam produces and presents the Comfortably Hungry podcast which won the audio award for the Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards in 2025. She is also a co-host/producer on the A is for Apple podcast. Sam is about to embark on a doctorate at Leeds Beckett University exploring the foodways of the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain.

For further information visit sambilton.com  or follow Sam on instagram @mrssbilton