The Heart of England is a region of Britain with an impressive culinary tradition and currently home to more than a dozen Michelin-starred restaurants. These fine-dining destinations owe much, however, to the more modest dishes served up in what was once a very rural and not especially prosperous area.
The Industrial Revolution swiftly gathered momentum in this region, and so the population of the Heart of England grew at pace, its nutritional needs prodigious and its resources slim. The resulting dishes made use of every comestible available to create hearty food to fuel industry.
Some foods that have been attributed to the Midlands over the years have hard to define origins – pikelets, faggots (made from meat and offal), pork scratchings (spiced and
