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Continue reading →: Twelve Grapes & One Pot of PeasOn New Year’s Luck, Inherited Rituals, and the History We Didn’t Know We Were Eating Dear Readers, This evening finds me writing somewhat off-script, the candles burned lower than planned and my thoughts wandering far beyond their usual mischief. In the course of recent research, ostensibly undertaken for one purpose…
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Continue reading →: The Tamal Tidings: How Mesoamerican Ritual Food Became a Christmas Power MoveDear Readers, It is commonly agreed, or at least politely assumed, that Christmas tables are governed by goodwill. Candles are lit. Chairs are pulled close. Everyone arrives prepared to behave. This assumption has never survived sustained observation. December gatherings tend to function as quiet exhibitions of power. Who hosts. Who…
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Continue reading →: The Eggnog Insurrection: When Colonial America Turned a Drink into a RiotA Yuletide Tale of Fermented Folly and Military Mayhem Dear Readers, Gather close, warm your hands upon the hearth, and prepare your most dramatically embroidered shawl, for tonight’s chronicle is no gentle fireside yarn. No, indeed. It is a tale so unrestrained and so utterly soaked in whiskey soaked audacity…
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Continue reading →: A Nation Pauses to Preen: The Curious American Ritual of Giving ThanksAs told by Lady Simmertown A Prelude to Gratitude Dear Readers, Settle in with a warm beverage and your most luxurious shawl, for the tale of American Thanksgiving is a drama worthy of any Regency drawing room. The holiday that now thrives upon roasted fowl and familial theatrics did not…
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Continue reading →: The Pumpkin Pie Prohibition That Never WasA Scandal of Puritans, Pleasure, and the Pastry They Feared to Name… Dearest Readers, Summon your most delicate fan, for what I am about to reveal may cause even the stoutest hostess to gasp over her teacup. There exists a rumor, passed from kitchen to kitchen, that the pumpkin pie…
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Continue reading →: The Divine Revelry of Death: An Exposé on Día de los MuertosWhile the rest of the world clutches pearls at the mention of mortality, Mexico pours her a drink and invites her to dance. Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, is not a lament, but a love story between the living and the departed. Born of Aztec devotion…
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Continue reading →: The Poisoned Humbugs of Bradford: A Most Deadly ConfectionIn 1858 Bradford, England, innocent humbugs were laced with arsenic, turning a confectioner’s delight into a killer’s curse. The sweet shop windows gleamed with sugar, but behind the glass? A most deadly confection.
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Continue reading →: CANDY, CYANIDE, & THE DEVIL IN A PIXY STIXSweetness curdled. Trust undone. Halloween reborn in horror. Dearest Readers, Gather close, for tonight’s tale is sugared with deceit and dusted with death. It begins not in the gothic manors of Europe but in the neat lawns of 1970s suburban Texas, where the greatest horror was thought to be cavities.…
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Continue reading →: Banquets Before the Trumpet: The Great Disappointment’s Culinary FollyA Trumpet That Never Sounded My most indulgent readers, clutch your forks as well as your pearls, for I bring tidings of a feast most peculiar, a banquet that never arrived, yet left fields barren, larders empty, and countless believers gnawing upon the bitter crust of disappointment. In the year…
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Continue reading →: St. Anthony’s Fire: When Bread Betrayed the VillageDear Readers, Pray gather round, for I bring you a scandal so dreadful it singed not only the flesh of the poor, but the very reputation of bread itself. In the damp, unassuming fields of Europe’s countryside, rye was once the loyal sustainer of peasants. Yet within its dusky grains…
About Lady Simmertown:
Welcome Dear Reader,
Who is Lady Simmertown? A question whispered over buttered crumpets and scribbled in the margins of recipe books across the land.
Some say she was born amidst lace napkins and lemon curd. Others claim she emerged fully formed from a scandalous soufflé that collapsed at a Duke’s dinner party. What is known: she is a writer of biting wit, a keeper of culinary secrets, and an unapologetic admirer of chaos served with cream.
Lady Simmertown does not merely blog, she chronicles. With a quill sharpened by satire and a pantry full of powdered irony, she serves up tales of forgotten recipes, edible absurdities, and food history most improper. Expect tea. Expect trouble. Expect tart commentary and possibly actual tarts.
She resides somewhere between a Regency ball and your favorite bakery, scribbling letters and uncovering the delicious underbelly of society, one post at a time.
Let’s connect
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Butter, Ink & Indiscretion 