Downton Abbey's County Has Its Own Holiday (and I Made You a Tart)

Today, August 1st, is Yorkshire Day.

If you’re a Downton Abbey fan, you already have a stake in this one. The Crawleys’ fictional estate sits in Yorkshire, England’s largest historic county, and the same county that gets its own civic holiday every August 1.

I wrote up the real story behind it this week: a battle in 1759, a protest in 1975, and the food that would have been on a table like the Crawleys’ long before anyone thought to name a day after the county.

• Why Yorkshire Day lands on August 1 (it’s not a random date)

• How a protest against a 1974 boundary change turned into an official civic celebration by 1985

• Four foods worth knowing, and the real history behind each: Yorkshire pudding, parkin, Wensleydale cheese, and curd tart

• Where Downton Abbey’s real filming locations actually are, and how that compares to the Crawleys’ fictional Yorkshire address

Read the full history →

Curd tart is Yorkshire’s answer to cheesecake: curd cheese, currants, lemon zest, and a good grating of nutmeg, baked into a shortcrust shell. It’s been a Yorkshire teatime staple since the 1600s, and it’s still the top order at Betty’s Tea Room in York.

The recipe in the full post is built for an American kitchen. Real curd cheese is nearly impossible to find here, so it’s adapted for well-drained cottage cheese instead. No specialty order required.

Get the recipe →

None of these dishes survived because they were fashionable. They survived because they worked: they used what the county had on hand, fed people well, and tasted good enough to keep making for three hundred years. That’s worth remembering the next time a recipe calls for something humble.

Put the kettle on. More from Yorkshire soon.

P.S.

If you make the curd tart, hit reply and tell me how it went. I read every one.