Butterbeer and Grootcakes
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 16 June 2017
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Aleks Krotoski takes her seat at the table to explore the amazing world of fictional food made real.
Food is not a new force in fiction, but increasingly fictional food is finding its way onto the table. And fan communities from the new breed of modern cultural canon aren't just nibbling on Laura Esquivel's devastating quail in rose petal sauce from Like Water for Chocolate, but also tucking in to fried squirrel and raccoon from The Hunger Games, Sansa's lemon cakes from Game of Thrones, or downing a frothy glass of butterbeer from Harry Potter.
Now Aleks gathers together three people who know a lot about fictional food to discuss its appeal for fans, authors and food creators alike. Together, they will make, and eat, a meal of food from fiction, and discuss some of the interesting questions it raises.
Joanne Harris is author of several novels where food is almost a character in its own right - most famously Chocolat, which was turned into a film of the same name; she also co-created a cookbook, The Little Book of Chocolat, for the many fans desperate to make the concoctions they had read about in her novels. Sam Bompas is co-founder of creative food studio Bompas & Parr, who recently helped create Dinner At The Twits, inspired by Roald Dahl's book. And Kate Young brings together her passion for food and literature in her blog The Little Library Café, where she creates recipes for food found in fiction, and many of them will be included in her first cookbook, The Little Library Cookbook.
The programme also includes music played on the flavour conductor - a working cocktail organ, conceived by Sam Bompas for Johnnie Walker. The music is composed by Simon Little.
Producer: Giles Edwards.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the Maze, listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:34.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:39.0 | Hello and welcome to Seriously. |
| 0:41.0 | I'm Riana Dylan and today some food for thought. |
| 0:45.0 | We're going to a dinner party but one like no other. |
| 0:50.0 | One of the things that are most disgusting that are really going to grip people by the |
| 0:55.9 | throat and make them wretch but when they bite into it they see that it's actually |
| 1:00.2 | rather wonderful. From the Twits to Harry Potter food brings fictional worlds and |
| 1:05.8 | characters to life we can taste the story with every grotesque or glorious |
| 1:11.4 | spoonful it's weirdly not as disgusting as I thought it sounded. |
| 1:15.0 | So pull up a seat, unfurl your napkin and grab your knife and fork |
| 1:21.0 | because Alex Kratoski is serving up butter beer and |
| 1:24.3 | Groot cakes. I've had so many letters from people who have felt empowered to open chocolate shops because of me and they read my book and they said well I'd like to do that which is amazing. |
| 1:38.0 | We've invited author Joanne Harris to a very special dinner party. Joanne wrote the global bestseller |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

