Isabella Beeton was the first superstar of the kitchen. She only wrote one book but it was a bestseller from the day it came out in 1861 and has continued to be a bestseller ever since. It was so popular because it was far more than just a cook book. She also gave remarkable insights into how the Victorians lived and what women were expected to do.
Her book covered everything you needed to know in the kitchen from A to Y – from Almonds to Yorkshire Pudding. There were no entries under Z. But she also offered advice on how to manage a house, rear babies, deal with doctors, run a dinner party, keep hubby happy, manage the ever important servants and cope in an emergency. She was fascinated by the new science of nutrition. For the Victorians, there were no instant meals and two minute gourmet dishes – so cooking was a slow burn and needed a great deal of planning. One striking difference between then and now is how rich they were in time.
David Cohen never expected to write a book about Mrs Beeton but became fascinated by her ideas, her social and historical comments and her 40 Top Recipes. In this book he has filleted out her most interesting ideas. Mrs Beeton’s Best Bits is a handy introduction to her life and ideas and it is entertaining, full of extraordinary details such as why you should not feed tomatoes to your parrot and how to prepare turtles for the soup. He also reveals her passions for poetry, Greece, hunting and her love hate relationship with the French.
Her book covered everything you needed to know in the kitchen from A to Y – from Almonds to Yorkshire Pudding. There were no entries under Z. But she also offered advice on how to manage a house, rear babies, deal with doctors, run a dinner party, keep hubby happy, manage the ever important servants and cope in an emergency. She was fascinated by the new science of nutrition. For the Victorians, there were no instant meals and two minute gourmet dishes – so cooking was a slow burn and needed a great deal of planning. One striking difference between then and now is how rich they were in time.
David Cohen never expected to write a book about Mrs Beeton but became fascinated by her ideas, her social and historical comments and her 40 Top Recipes. In this book he has filleted out her most interesting ideas. Mrs Beeton’s Best Bits is a handy introduction to her life and ideas and it is entertaining, full of extraordinary details such as why you should not feed tomatoes to your parrot and how to prepare turtles for the soup. He also reveals her passions for poetry, Greece, hunting and her love hate relationship with the French.
