The Cotswolds is known for its tasty local produce, from cheeses and Bibury trout to lamb and Gloucester Old Spot pork. Traditional Cotswold recipes focused on simple, inexpensive dishes to fill you up for a day’s work, using farmed and foraged ingredients with nothing going to waste.
Some historic regional dishes like casseroled lampreys (an eel-like fish) and rook pie use ingredients you’re unlikely to find in modern supermarkets! But we’ve chosen five tasty recipes from the Cotswold to give you a taste of the region, with a mix of sweet and savoury options.
Cotswold Dumplings
Gloucester cheese has been made since at least the 16th century, and features in many traditional Cotswold recipes – as well being used in the cheese rolling at Cooper’s Hill each May. Both Double and Single Gloucester cheeses are made using milk from Old Gloucester cattle. Double Gloucester uses full cream milk and is aged for longer, with a stronger flavour and brighter colour.
Single Gloucester is less common and can only be made in Gloucestershire. It uses part-skimmed milk and is lighter and more crumbly. Either variety can be used in this recipe, or if you can’t find Gloucester cheese you could use a similar semi-hard cheese like Cheddar or Cheshire.
Cotswold Dumplings are a cheap and easy peasant dish, made with leftover bread and cheese. They’re not a traditional doughy dumpling, but instead are light and crispy. They can be served hot alongside a stew, dipped in a simple tomato sauce, or eaten cold as a snack.
Ingredients
- 50g/2oz grated Double or Single Gloucester cheese
- 25g/1oz butter or margarine
- 50g/2oz fresh breadcrumbs
- 25g/1oz dried breadcrumbs
- 1 egg, beaten
- Oil for frying
Method
- Beat the butter/margarine until creamy, then mix in the grated cheese and beaten egg.
- Season with salt and pepper.
- Stir in the fresh breadcrumbs to create a stiff dough.
- Break off sections of the dough and roll it into small balls.
- Roll the dumplings in the dried breadcrumbs until they’re well coated.
- Shallow fry in hot fat until they’re golden brown, then drain on kitchen paper.
Gloucestershire Cheese and Ale
Another recipe making the most of local cheese is Gloucestershire Cheese and Ale – the county’s take on Welsh rarebit or cheese on toast. As well as Gloucester cheese, the recipe also includes fiery Tewkesbury mustard, which is made from a mix of mustard seeds and horseradish.
Tewkesbury mustard has been made since medieval times, with a character in Shakespeare’s Henry IV described as having “wit as thick as Tewkesbury mustard”. It was originally sold as dried balls which had to be mixed with liquid. But today you can buy it in jars ready-to-eat.
This recipe is a rich, hearty winter warmer. You can use any brown ale – though if you wanted to use beer from the Cotswolds you could try North Cotswold Brewery’s Moreton Mild, Hook Norton Brewery’s Old Hooky or Donnington Brewery’s SBA. The recipe uses half a pint of ale which makes quite a soupy sauce, so reduce the liquid levels if you want to spread it on your toast.
Ingredients
- 225g/8oz grated Double or Single Gloucester cheese
- 1 tsp Tewkesbury mustard
- ½ pint/300ml brown ale
- 8 slices of bread for toasting
Method
- Place the grated cheese in an ovenproof dish.
- Top with the mustard and pour over the ale.
- Bake in a preheated oven at 190ºC/375ºF for 15–20 minutes until the cheese has melted.
- Toast the bread just before the cheese comes out of the oven.
- Put the toast in a bowl and pour over the cheese and ale mixture. Serve with the remaining ale.
Heg Peg Dump
Steamed suet puddings – both sweet and savoury – feature heavily in old Cotswold recipes. This version takes advantage of the autumn fruits growing wild in local hedgerows. Traditionally that would be plums or damsons, but you can also use other fruit like blackberries or apples.
Its unusual name comes from ‘Heg’ for hedgerow, ‘Peg’ for Margaret and ‘Dump’ for dumpling. Peg is short for Margaret and is named after St Margaret of Antioch, patron saint of childbirth. Her feast day takes place on 20 July and was celebrated in Gloucestershire with this pudding.
Heg Peg Dump is slowly steam cooked, either in a pan or a slow cooker. The suet gives it a rich taste, which is offset by the sharpness of the fruit and topped with custard or cream.
Ingredients
- 225g/8oz self-raising flour
- 100g/4oz shredded suet
- 1 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- 600g/1lb 5oz fruit, stoned and chopped
- 175g/6oz sugar (adjust depending on the sourness of the fruit used)
Method
- Butter a two-pint pudding basin.
- Mix the flour, baking powder and salt, then add the suet and enough water to make a soft dough.
- Tip out onto a floured work surface and knead lightly.
- Keep a third of the dough for the lid and roll out the other two-thirds.
- Line the basin with the dough, fill it with fruit to ¾ full and add the sugar.
- Roll out the rest of the dough to make a lid, moisten the edges and pinch to seal.
- Cover the basin with a piece of greaseproof paper then a layer of foil and tie with string.
- Fill a large pan or slow cooker with boiling water to halfway up the basin.
- Put the lid on and steam for 2–3 hours (pan) or 4–6 hours (slow cooker on high/medium).
Crundle Pudding
This traditional Cotswold pudding uses just a few simple ingredients – flour, eggs, milk, butter and sugar. Crundle Pudding comes from the small village of Weston-sub-Edge at the foot of Dover’s Hill near Chipping Campden, the home of the annual Cotswold Olimpick Games.
Don’t worry if it looks very liquid when you put it in the oven, it firms up into a light sponge at the top with a custardy layer underneath. It’s best served warm straight from the oven – traditionally it was topped with black treacle and cream, but you can also enjoy it with cooked fruit.
Ingredients
- 50g/2oz plain flour
- 50g/2oz caster sugar
- 50g/2oz butter, softened
- 1 egg, beaten
- ½ pint/300ml milk
Method
- Grease a small ovenproof dish and preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF.
- Rub the butter into the flour until it’s the texture of breadcrumbs, then mix in the sugar.
- Separate the egg, whisk the white until its stiff and then add the yolk and beat again.
- Add the egg to the mixture then stir the milk in gradually (just before putting it in the oven).
- Pour the mixture into the dish and cook for 30–40 minutes until golden brown.
Bath Buns
With their sweet dough topped with caraway seeds, Bath Buns (not to be confused with Sally Lunn buns which are also made in Bath) were a favourite of Jane Austen. Legend has it 18th-century physician Dr William Oliver prescribed them to his patients after they’d taken the waters at the baths – but they were too popular (and fattening), so he had to swap them for plain biscuits.
Some recipes add dried fruit to the buns, but this is the classic plain version which goes brilliantly with jam and cream. The caraway seeds on top would have originally been coated in layers of sugar to make comfits. But a less fiddly method is to top the buns with seeds and sugar syrup.
Ingredients
- 600g/1lb 5oz strong white flour
- 120g/4¼oz butter
- 120g/4¼oz golden caster sugar (80g for the dough and 40g for the glaze)
- ½ pint/300ml whole milk
- 3 eggs
- 7g sachet fast-action dried yeast
- 2 tsp caraway seeds
- 1 tsp salt
Method
- Heat the milk over a low heat until just steaming, then leave to cool for 15 minutes.
- Beat two of the eggs into the milk.
- Rub the butter into the flour until it’s the texture of breadcrumbs, then mix in the sugar and salt.
- Stir in the yeast, then make a well in the centre and pour in the milk/egg mixture.
- Stir until it forms a sticky dough, then tip out onto a floured work surface.
- Knead the dough until smooth (5 minutes in a bread mixer/15 minutes by hand).
- Put in an oiled bowl, cover with a tea towel and leave to prove for an hour until doubled in size.
- Tip the dough out onto a floured work surface and knock out the air.
- Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces and roll into balls.
- Place on two baking trays lined with baking parchment (leave plenty of space between them).
- Cover with tea towels and leave to prove for an hour.
- Beat the remaining egg and brush the top of the buns with it.
- Bake at 200ºC/392°F for 20–25 minutes until golden brown.
- Let them cool on a wire rack, then mix the remaining sugar with 20ml of boiling water.
- Brush the sugar syrup over the buns, sprinkle over caraway seeds and serve while warm.
Looking for more Cotswold recipes?
If you have a hankering to expand your Cotswold recipe repertoire, there are a few old recipe books available: Flavours of Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds* (Julia Skinner), Cassell’s Country Cookbooks: The Cotswolds (Carol Wright) and Favourite Cotswold Recipes (AR Quinton). The last two are out of print but you can find copies for sale on eBay or in secondhand bookstores.
* This site contains affiliate links, where I get a small commission from purchases at no extra cost to you.
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