Helen Peacocke on a new cookbook about the influential Bloomsbury Set

Food may not have dominated the Bloomsbury Group’s 20th- century publications as it does today’s novels, nevertheless the writers who made up the group were considered the foodies of their time. Meeting as they did around the dining table for lingering breakfasts and painting lunches, they fostered a fresh, creative and vital way of living that encouraged debate and communication.

After a couple of visits to Charleston, the Sussex home of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, food writer Jans Ondaatje Rolls admits falling in love with its location at the foot of Firle Beacon. She considered this glorious house, where the Bloomsbury pulse was strongest, absolutely stunning. She loved the pond, its walled garden, the incredible array of flowers and fruit trees and describes the interior as having that “wow factor which is hard to explain unless you go there”.

She describes the colours as astonish-ing: “Every conceivable paintable surface of the house — the walls, the fabrics, the furniture — is covered with beautiful post-impressionist-style decorations created by the couple. Their creative energy still resonates throughout. “It wasn’t until I returned to Charleston a couple of years later and had a full tour of the house, which included the kitchen, that the idea of writing a book about Bloomsbury from the cooking/dining room table perspec-tive came to me,” said Jans, who real-ised that this was part of Bloomsbury that had not been explored.

Writing about this aspect of their lives seemed to her an obvious way of getting to know the members of the Bloomsbury on a personal level and connect with them. Jans writes: “What better, then for exchanging and developing ideas than the dining table accommodating a group that included some of the most intelligent and innovative thinkers of the land.”

Her book The Bloomsbury Cookbook – Recipes for Life, Love and Art (Thames & Hudson £24.95) casts a fascinating new light on Bloomsbury with samples of recipes and foodie references that she found in their diaries, letters and memoirs.

Though few of the Bloomsbury Set actually prepared the meals that graced their tables, they were enthusiastic about tasty, unfussy dishes and particularly enjoyed the cuisine of southern France, as much as they enjoyed visiting Provence. Such was their enthusiasm for this food their servants were sent on cookery classes where they could master dishes from France, Spain and Italy. It wasn’t long before the group acquired a taste for garlic, avocado and exotic herbs. Part cookbook, part social and cultural history, the book — which includes 300 recipes (170 are original) — tells us the story of the Blooms-bury Group from 1890 to the very recent past. The group includes EM Forster, Roger Fry, John Maynard Keynes, Lutton Strachy, Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf.

In her search to match recipes with the dishes she has uncovered, she has made no attempt to add a modern twist to the recipes. They are reprinted as they appeared originally. There is no attempt to convert units of measurement to modern metric equivalents. A conversion table is supplied which the reader can consult should they wish to cook: Lytton soup, Bloomsbury stew, kedgeree, walnut and coffee slice, seed cake, Hogarth Eccles cakes, heavenly Peking duck or Vita’s magnificent Strasbourg pie.

If you are fond of serv-ing themed meals, be they breakfast, luncheon or afternoon tea, this book will enable to you to create some simply splendid meals, which will encourage conversation today, just as they did when poets, writers, philosophers and writers of yesteryear sat together to talk of cabbages and kings and put the world to rights. Jans has included a list of dishes the group put together for a Bohemian picnic, which includes Boris Anrep’s Frankfurst sausages, Virginia Nicholson’s stuffed Charlestone vine leaves and Helen Anrep’s marinade of mushrooms. Angelica Garnett’s cherry tart taken from her family recipe book is also included.

Having tested every dish she has featured, Jans says they were all fun to cook, but the quantity of rich foods became rather overwhelming by the end of the four-and-a-half months it took her to test them all.

She said: “Frances Partridges’s Beef, cold fillet, provided an excellent result taste-wise, but the Bloomsbury stew was probably the most surprising as I had never eaten mutton before and was happy to discover that it is rich and flavourful, perfect in a stew.

“I like working with new ingredients and this recipe was both a culinary adventure and a taste experience from the past, as indeed most of the recipes in the book are. It is one of Lydia Lopokova’s recipes — she was the Russian ballerina who married John Maynard Keynes in 1925.” It was Virginia Woolf who said: “One cannot think well, love well, or sleep well if one has not dined well.”

I am inclined to agree.

Jans Ondaatje Rolls will be speaking today (Thursday, March 27) at the Oxford Literary Festival where copies of her book will be on sale throughout the festival.