The shift from summer cooking to autumn cooking doesn’t happen on a specific date. It happens when the produce changes — when the tomatoes stop being worth buying and the squash and celeriac arrive to replace them. In Britain and Ireland, this usually falls somewhere in the first two weeks of September, though the year’s weather determines exactly when.
There is a week, sometimes two, where both are true at once. The last good tomatoes of the year sit next to the first butternut squash of the season. A shop might have vine tomatoes still worth eating alongside a celeriac that has just arrived from a Kent farm. This overlap is, for food, the most interesting moment of the year. Two entirely different cooking modes available simultaneously.
What disappears
Summer produce is fragile. It is also, at its best, almost entirely effortless to cook — the argument of the last three months. Courgettes, tomatoes, aubergines, sweetcorn, green beans: these things want very little done to them. They are good raw, good with barely any heat, good at room temperature. The kitchen can be cool, the cooking fast, the results excellent.
By the end of September, most of this is gone. What the shops have calling itself a tomato is no longer the same ingredient. The courgettes are oversized and watery. The sweetcorn has passed. Aubergines from elsewhere will arrive and be fine for cooking into things, but they won’t be the same as an English August aubergine eaten with tahini and pomegranate seeds and very little else.
What arrives
The autumn produce requires more from the cook and rewards it. Butternut squash, crown prince, delica pumpkin — the winter squashes that need peeling and long roasting before they become what they’re supposed to be. Celeriac, which needs a confident hand and at least twenty minutes in the oven before it relents. Wild mushrooms, if you’re in reach of a good greengrocer or market: chanterelles, ceps, hen of the woods. Leeks, which are different from spring onions and better suited to slow cooking. The first parsnips, better after a frost.
The cooking that these ingredients demand is different. Longer. Lower, sometimes, though squash benefits from high heat. Braising comes back: the slow-cooked meat in an aromatic liquid, the bean stew with thyme and a bay leaf, the chicken thigh in wine with mushrooms and shallots. These things were too heavy in July. In September they begin to feel right.
The transition dish
The best dishes of this week use both. A roasted squash salad dressed with a tomato vinaigrette made from the last of the summer tomatoes. A warm grain bowl with roasted squash and a herb sauce made with the remaining summer basil. A braise finished with a spoonful of the slow-roasted tomato base sitting in the fridge from last week.
It won’t be possible to do this in October. By then, the summer ingredients are gone and the autumn cooking is the only mode available. The transition week is the brief opportunity to use them together — which is worth doing deliberately rather than missing.
September is the most interesting month to cook in. It’s the only month where you can make a tomato salad and a pumpkin soup on the same day and have both be correct.
How to cook through it
The practical approach: don’t switch modes abruptly. Keep some of the summer habits — the cold sauces, the simple preparations, the emphasis on room-temperature serving — while gradually reintroducing what the new season produces. The first roasted squash of September doesn’t need to be a full autumn dish. It can be dressed with tahini, herbs and lemon juice and served over room-temperature grains. The techniques are the same. Only the main ingredient has changed.
By October, the adjustment will have happened naturally. The cold sauces will give way to warm ones. The room-temperature serving will give way to steaming bowls. The cooking will slow down and the flavours will deepen. This is the right direction for the season. But there’s no need to rush to get there.