In the early autumn you may have the luck to find Wordsworth's home, Rydal Mount, between Ambleside and Grasmere, almost free of visitors. You can wander round the steep garden that the poet designed himself, a garden as beautiful as any I have ever seen. (I would rank it as highly as the garden created by the painter Monet at Giverney, though of course it is very different in type.)
The house sits at the top surveying the small kingdom. In the dining room, which was the living room of the original house, there is a spice cupboard with a carved door. It was there long before the Wordsworths.
I can imagine Dorothy taking out the ginger to make gingerbread which her brother liked so much. When they lived at Dove Cottage, cramped but again with a delicious garden, William would sometimes have a longing for gingerbread. Once they set out at night in January to walk to the gingerbread seller's house: they were going to make it themselves next day, but William could not bear to wait.
There were usually two kinds; the Wordsworths obviously preferred it thick - as in the recipe below - but all the seller had was thin. This I take to have been similar to the kind sold today, in the shop where Mrs Sarah Nelson started her business in 1855, in the former school building that dates back to 1660, right by the churchyard where William and Dorothy are buried.
Grasmere gingerbread
250g flour
125g pale soft brown sugar
2 levels tsps ground ginger
1/4 level tsp baking powder
150g lightly salted butter, melted
Mix dry ingredients to a dough with the melted, tepid butter. Spread out in a layer about one cm thick, in a square pan lined with Bakewell paper. Bake until golden brown at gas 4, 180C (350F), 30-35 minutes. Cut into oblong biscuits, but leave to cool in the tin. Serve as they are, or as a pudding topped with whipped cream flavoured with slivers of preserved ginger and some of the syrup.
You can also put a buttercream on top, flavoured in the same way. But make it properly with eggs and unsalted butter, not with salted butter and too much icing sugar in the English teashop style. These quantities make plenty for six.
A number of towns in the country named puddings of their own. They are not always distinguished but this one with a shallow lemon filling and a thick meringue top is a winner.
Chester pudding
60g butter
grated rind and juice of a lemon
125g granulated sugar
4 large egg yolks, beaten
24 almonds, blanched, grated in a nut mill or processed
4 large egg whites
125g sugar
Line a 20-23cm tart tin, with a removable base, with sweet shortcrust and bake it blind until lightly coloured.
While the pastry case bakes, make the lemon filling. Melt the butter in a small heavy pan. Off the heat, whisk in the rind and juice, sugar and egg yolks. When smooth add the almonds. Put back on the stove and stir until the mixture is very hot but not near boiling. Spread it into the warm pastry case (or into the cold pastry, if it has been baked in advance). It will already be setting into a thick jelly.
Preheat the oven to gas 7, 220C (425F). Whisk the egg whites until stiff, pour in most of the second lot of sugar and whisk again until very stiff and a creamy-smooth texture. Pile onto the tart, right to the pastry edges. Sprinkle remaining sugar on top. Put into the oven. After five minutes, check and if the peaks of the meringue are beginning to turn dark brown, lower the heat to gas 3, 160C (325F); if they are not dark brown, leave for another five minutes before turning down.
Leave the meringue to go crisp on the outside. This can take nearly 30 minutes. Keep checking and tapping the crust gently. When it is ready, remove and put onto a warm plate. Best eaten warm, with cream, but good cold as well.
• Jane Grigson's Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery is available in October published by Grub Street at £14.99. To order a copy for £12.99 plus postage & packing, call The Observer book service on 0870 066 7989
