This article contains spoilers for 'Florence Pugh's English Odyssey' on No Taste Like Home
New TV programme No Taste Like Home combines family history, food and travel. In each episode, presenter Antoni Porowski meets a celebrity guest, who sets out to trace the origins of a beloved family recipe.
In the first episode, Antoni and Oscar-nominated actor Florence Pugh, star of Little Women, Oppenheimer and Dune: Part Two, explore Florence’s family history and Britain’s culinary heritage.
They begin in Florence’s home city of Oxford, where they have lunch with her mother Deborah and grandmother Pat. Florence’s father Clinton Pugh is a restaurateur and food is very important to her family. They cook the Pugh family’s traditional favourite dish – shepherd’s pie.
Family history research reveals that Florence’s maternal 3x great grandfather James Tose was from the sheep-farming town of Thirsk in Yorkshire, where shepherd’s pie, made with lamb, is a popular favourite. James was the landlord of the Red Bear Hotel and a remarkable old newspaper article from 1879 reveals that Bob Carlisle, a man who became famous for pushing a wheelbarrow from Land’s End to John O’Groats and back again, passed through the town and was hosted at the hotel, where James cooked him lamb chops.
Florence and Antoni meet celebrated chef Tommy Banks, whose parents own a sheep farm in Thirsk. After having a go at helping herd the sheep, Tommy cooks them a delicious meal of hogget chops. Hogget are sheep aged over one year but under two. He also shows them how to make the famous Yorkshire puddings with fat from the hogget, and finishes it off with a Yorkshire salad.
“It’s just really cool and amazing to see that in my family to host and to provide and to feed clearly is something that runs true through many generations,” Florence says.
Sadly, the records show that James’ time as a pub landlord didn’t last. By 1883 he had filed for bankruptcy. However, he was undaunted and went to Whitby to open a fishmonger’s. At Whitby, Florence and Antoni meet fishmonger Barry Brown, who shows them how to smoke herring to produce the traditional Whitby kippers.
Next, Florence and Antoni want to find out about the other side of Florence’s family. To do this, they head to London, where they ride a boat down the Thames. Antoni tells Florence that her 3x great grandparents, Mauritz Becht and Anna Maria van den Berg, were Dutch immigrants who came to Britain in the 1860s in search of a better life. Living in poverty in London, they probably wouldn’t have had access to a kitchen and would have bought their food from London’s many street stalls. One of the most popular dishes of the day was oysters, so they meet oyster farmer Tom Howard to learn about the history of oyster farming in the Thames estuary, and visit an oyster stall to learn how to shuck oysters.
Mauritz and Anna had a daughter, Johanna, who married a Lewis Pugh. Incredibly, their daughter, born in 1882, was also called Florence Pugh.
“I’m so intrigued that there is another Florence,” Florence says. “Where is she? Where did she go? Where did she live? Did she have children?”
In St Pancras Gardens, Antoni tells Florence the rest of the story. Sadly, the other Florence Pugh died aged four, probably of tuberculosis. Florence is very moved by this connection between them, as she had similar health problems when she was a child.
“I wasn’t supposed to live,” she says. “When I was born they told my parents that it wasn’t going to happen, and just enjoy the time whilst you have it.”
Johanna and Lewis then had another daughter, Alice Pugh. But Johanna then died and Alice was sent to live in St Pancras Workhouse. It would have been a bleak childhood, but Alice had a chance of a better life when she was fourteen. She was sent to Leavesden in the countryside, to a girl’s school designed to teach girls domestic skills so they could find work. By the time of the 1911 census Alice, aged 21, is working as a cook in the household of a Thomas Battersbury in London. Like many of Florence’s family, she had a love of food. Florence and Antoni enjoy a classic afternoon tea with a Victoria sponge cake, like the ones Alice would have cooked.
“She had an opportunity and she took it,” Florence says. “She was amazing.”
Florence and Antoni finish by enjoying a classic Sunday roast dinner with Florence’s family while she tells them what she’s learned.
“It’s been so thrilling to learn about my ancestors,” she says. “I love learning that food has been this beating drum throughout many generations on both sides of my family.”
Florence Pugh's episode of No Taste Like Home will air on Disney+ from Monday 24 February and on National Geographic at 10pm on Wednesday 26 February.
