Mrs Beeton, circa 1969

I mentioned in a previous post that I have a nineteen sixties copy of the seminal Mrs Beeton’s book of cookery and household management.

I flicked through it the other night to try and answer the question; “was British cookery before the 1990’s really as bad as legend suggests?”

The evidence seemed mixed. Certainly whoever was editing this edition of the book didn’t employ the services of a food stylist. And the colour ‘plates’ (photographs) of food look, as I imagine, like the standard fayre of some 1960’s motorway service station (arrived at by Ford Cortina), or the offerings of some grim period minor public school on a parent’s day (never to be arrived at by Ford Cortina).

But amid the culinary carnage, there are, interspersed, some good but simple recipes. And any cookbook that has a section headed ‘Fish for Invalids’ immediately gets put on my own personal ‘interest list’. Over and above any number of the numerous, glossy, styled, on-trend, celebrity chef endorsed, recipe books that clog up the shelving of my local high street remaindered book store. Any day of the week, any year.