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There, on a slope of orchard, Francis laid
A damask napkin wrought with horse and hound,
Brought out a dusky loaf that smelt of home,
And, half-cut down, a pasty costly-made,
Where quail and pigeon, lark and leveret lay,
Like fossils of the rock, with golden yolks
Imbedded and injellied; last, with these,
A flask of cider from his father’s vats…
Trust Tennyson, in Audley Court, to give us one of the greatest of British picnics, his Platonic ideal of an alfresco feast, a blessed union of sylvan bliss and clement weather, scintillating company and splendid food. If only it were always so easy. ‘Sand in the sandwiches, wasps in the tea,’ as Betjeman so beautifully put it. The true essence of the great British picnic.
When will we ever learn? Our love of outdoor feasting is as peculiar as it is endearing, the eternal triumph of hope over experience. I’d understand our obsession rather more if this country had the climate of Sicily, say, or Sydney, where the prospect of a picnic is not so sullied by matters meteorological, where azure, cloudless skies are a given, rather than mere vain hope. How many times have we packed the basket and chilled the wine, then set off for the great outdoors with a tune on our lips and a spring in our step, only to end up back in the car, masticating sullen sandwiches to the pitter-patter beat of an ‘unseasonal’ storm?
‘Lunches were to be endured, rather than enjoyed, a sort of culinary chamber of horrors, the greatest hits of bad British food’
(Image credit: Getty Images/H Armstrong Roberts)
There was no gastronomic nirvana to be found in the traditional picnic food of the 1970s and 1980s, either. Lunches were to be endured, rather than enjoyed, a sort of culinary chamber of horrors, the greatest hits of bad British food, all cheap pork, bad breath and heartburn. Scrofulous chipolatas, clad in a thick coating of grease; great wedges of cardboard quiche, soggily anaemic and seasoned with despair; pallid chicken legs that taste of defeat and bloater-paste sandwiches, heavy on the margarine. Crisps, too, always crisps, usually ready salted. To drink, weak tea, hopelessly milky, and blood-warm orange squash. Not so much a treat as a penance, often devoured in a crowded lay-by on a busy stretch of the A303.
It was all a long way from Milton’s Garden of Eden, perhaps the earliest picnic of all, where Adam and Eve feasted upon ‘Nectarine fruits’, sitting on a ‘soft downie bank damask’d with flowrs’ — although that particular picnic did not, as we all know, end well. Yet the picnic (meaning a specific outdoor meal, rather than just munching bread and cheese on some pilgrimage) is certainly nothing new, with roots in the royal hunting feasts of Tudor and Stuart times. These were serious, meat-heavy affairs, with loins of veal and beef, cold capon and mutton, pigeon pie, sausages and ox tongue. An old superstition decreed that the venison would turn rancid unless suitable quantities of grog had been drunk before the carcass was broken down, so lashings of booze were required, too.
‘My mother’s idea of a prep-school picnic was a last-minute supermarket sweep through the Chippenham Sainsbury’s’
The idea of picnicking for pure pleasure, rather than pure outdoor sustenance or sporting fuel, came rather later. Throughout the 18th century, the noble, rich and reliably indolent, inspired by their Grand Tour through the pavilions, grottos and formal gardens of Italy, came home and re-created follies, gazebos and the like in the grounds of their estates. Some, such as the Temple of the Winds at Mount Stewart in Northern Ireland and the castle at Saltram in Devon, even had subterranean kitchens, from which elaborate banquets mysteriously appeared. The word picnic, however, was first recorded in 1748, in a letter from Lord Chesterfield to his son — although it must have been in pretty general usage already. It derives from piquenique, a French word first recorded sometime towards the end of the 17th century, and closely related to the German picquenic, a term for an 18th-century Hanoverian ball. Italian and Swedish etymologists have found words that describe similar sorts of social occasions.
Still, the first official ‘picnics’ were rarely eaten outside. ‘A picnic supper,’ explained The Times on March 18, 1802, ‘consists of a variety of dishes. The subscribers to the entertainment have the bill of fare presented to them with a number against each dish. The lot which he draws obliges him to furnish the dish marked against it, which he either takes with him in his carriage or sends by servant.’ In short, a pretty upper-class affair. It was probably, argues Jackie Gurney in The National Trust Book of Picnics, ‘nothing more than a diversion, a novelty entertainment for a section of society with too little to do and too much time to do it’.
At the very pinnacle of that foppish society was the Prince of Wales (later George IV) who, with his mistress Mrs Fitzherbert, was a member of The Picnic Club (or Pic Nic Society), founded in 1802 as a ‘harmless and inoffensive society for persons of fashion’. Although this involved little more than trips to the theatre followed by a picnic supper, the club was seen as dissolute and immoral. It closed a year later and the word picnic was sullied, from then on associated with the silly, trifling and inconsequential.
Of course, there’s absolutely nothing silly about a proper picnic. Informality is the key. A few soft rugs, a couple of deckchairs and lots and lots of ice. My mother’s idea of a prep-school picnic was a last-minute supermarket sweep through the Chippenham Sainsbury’s, with endless sandwiches, sausages and packets of crisps. Absolutely fine by me. My aunt was slightly more organised, in that she’d raid Justin De Blanc (a sort of proto Ottolenghi) in London’s Pimlico for wonderful pâtés, pies, quiches and salads.
‘I do remember parents who would arrive at sports days with a vast oak table, formal chairs, thick linen tablecloths, silver candelabras and beef Wellington, served by a fleet of butlers’
You could argue that the best part of Royal Ascot is the picnic.
(Image credit: Getty Images/Ben Stansall)
I do remember parents who would arrive at sports days with a vast oak table, formal chairs, thick linen tablecloths, silver candelabras and beef Wellington, served by a fleet of butlers. As we mucked about on the grass, they would sit, formal as a state banquet at Windsor, fiddling with those damned fish knives. It really can’t have been much fun and totally misses the point. A proper picnic should be eaten on or near to the ground. You can get up, wander about, come and go as you please, unsullied by the dreary conventions of the dining-room table. It is about the pure pleasure of languid ease, food without fuss or faff.
Decent cool boxes are a must (Yeti ones are very good indeed) for food and wine alike. Wine should be a light rosé or crisp white, ice cold, and flow like the Thames in full spate.
As for the food, it should require no more than a fork (plus a sharp carving knife), and plates should always be paper. Never be afraid of using your fingers. A whole roast chicken with a pot of freshly made mayonnaise is an essential, alongside lots of good crusty bread; fillet of beef, cooked rare, and a proper raised pork pie, with an excess of English mustard; good British ham, carved thick, and Spanish pata negra, sliced tissue-paper thin; potted shrimps, smoked eel, a few dressed crabs and a big bowl of lobster salad.
Salads should refresh and inspire — sliced tomatoes swimming in olive oil, a proper Niçoise or a couple of pan bagnat, basically Niçoise in a loaf, made a day early so everything soaks deep into the bread. Vitello tonnato works well, as does a brace of fat Spanish tortillas, oozing in the middle. Don’t forget the Scampi Fries, obviously, and those olives in the tin from Perelló. A tub of cornichons never goes amiss, either, alongside some good British cheese. For pudding, English cherries and strawberries, Cornish clotted cream and Scottish raspberries — and a big box of Maltesers.
One final note — do choose your company with care. The sun may be beaming, and the food divine. But if your companions are bores, it will all be for naught.
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