Cookbooks!

Morgan kindly commented on my post, and mentioned that she liked cookbooks. I felt to fully explore my relationship with cookbooks needed a whole post!

You see, I am a complete fool for cookbooks. I adore them, but I have strong preferences. I love the chatty ones, the ones that have stories attached to the recipes or even better, history. I am severely addicted to history and I adore the old cookbooks. Most are too far out of my league to buy originals but fortunately there are a lot of facsimiles around.

It started when out of interest I bought a copy of Mrs Beeton's cookbook. I love the prosaic tone of her recipes, and the curious instructions (enough soda to fit on a sixpence) and the insight into a world where she could show how to pack a picnic for sixty.

Mrs Beeton looted a lot of recipes from Eliza Acton. I use a recipe from her for china chilo which is mince lamb slowly cooked with fresh peas and lettuce in butter, absolutely out of this world. I have a facsimile of her book dated 1846, which included a recipe for curry powder.

She looted from Hannah Glasse (the original 'first catch your hare') and Mrs Raffald (both eighteenth century). I think it is Mrs Raffald that gives instruction about how to make fine spun sugar baskets, which sound amazing and far, far above anything I would try, though I have tried things like 'quaking pudding' which is cream and eggs and breadcrumbs, very pleasant.

The best ever historical cookbook is Food in England by Dorothy Hartley. She is, or was (my copy was published in the fifties) a professional historian, but understood housewifery in the old sense. She talked of Saxon cooks peering round the door into Norman halls to see how a dish 'ate'. It is a marvellous read, how to preserve chickens for long sea voyages, planked steak (steak cooked on a piece of wood that would be slowly charring during the process!), the simple idea of different breeds of pig reared in different areas needing different treatment - I just could wallow in it. The recipes are in 'modern' as well, so it is possible to use them.

Then there are the contemporary cookbooks. I love the ones that you feel you are chatting to the author, with little anecdotes about where the recipe comes from, how it cooks, just a human touch. Though perhaps my most precious cookbook is precisely one of those cookbooks which list ingredients and a no frills list of stern instructions, which is a Hamlyn All Colour Cookbook, which is about the size of an annual and dear heart bought me in 1988, before we were officially engaged. I have never had a failure from it, either.

I have Soyer's cookbook for the working classes, which draws on his experiences with food kitchens in Ireland during the Famine, and a lovely 1896 cookery book which not only gives complete menus (with recipes) for each day of the year, which items needed to be bought and the sternly titled 'Things that should not be forgotten' which include such things as 'do not forget to clarify the dripping from the beef and store in cool larder'. I may post some recipes from that on here, as there are some intriguing ones.

I have two bookcases full of cookbooks. I have read all of them, often while eating a takeaway or sausages and oven chips. I have even used a few recipes over the years. I am not so interested in Gordon Ramsay or Jamie Oliver, though I am sure that the recipes are exquisite. I am interested in the 'housewifey' recipes that take into account thinner purses and the demands of children. But most of the recipes go untested. In fact the most recent recipes I have tried have been from the internet.

The most recent cookbooks I have bought are little square cookbooks called 'Home Food', 'Bowl Food', 'Fast Food' etc, that I bought at a low point and actually have some lovely and quite original recipes, but they are for those who have a bigger food budget than I. I will read through the ingredients list and mentally substitute the pancetta with bacon, the fancy hard cheese with cheddar, the fresh sweetcorn with tinned, and realise at the end that I have a completely different recipe to the one given! However there are some lovely recipes in there, some of which I have actually tried, including parsnip and bacon cake with honey mustard sauce and chicken with tarragon and mustard.

So, I know a lot of recipes and a lot of theory about cookery, and the details of a lot of ingredients. Tonight we are having baked potatoes, baked beans and frozen Birds Eye Chilli Bean Burgers.

Morgan - I hope you don't mind my reaction to your love of cookbooks, as it is a wonderful thing. I am sure you have most of the above, but if you haven't read Food in England, I cannot recommend it enough!