Modern Cookery for Private Families (Southover Press Historic Cookery and Housekeeping) by Eliza Acton

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  • robm on February 15, 2013

    Anyone interested in the history of cooking will be fascinated by Acton's book -- it's a comprehensive and broad-ranging look at the food and customs of the mid-Victorians. Downton Abbey fans should love it -- this is the kind of food that was being eaten at the Abbey in the middle 1800s!

  • robm on February 15, 2013

    This is a reprint of Eliza Acton's "Modern Cookery," perhaps the first genuinely modern cookbook in the English language. One can still cook from Acton today because she includes all the ingredients needed with the amounts/measurements required and explicit instructions . It appeared around 1845 and contains the classics of English cookery, although Acton also included French, German and even some Indian and Jewish recipes. It's interesting that the recipes are well spiced, including a liberal use of cayenne pepper. I would guess that a taste for well-seasoned food developed after thousands of Britons returned home from India and the West Indian colonies where they acquired a taste for piquant flavors. Of course, there was also a heritage of highly-spiced food descending from the middle ages, when spices were used liberally to disguise often questionable foods! The general British aversion to sharp spices seems to be a more modern development.

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  • ISBN 10 1781798915
  • ISBN 13 9781781798911
  • Published May 31 1993
  • Format Hardcover
  • Page Count 544
  • Language English
  • Countries United Kingdom
  • Publisher Equinox Publishing

Publishers Text

An unabridged reprint of Miss Acton's great book, first published in 1845 and added to by the author ten years later. This reprint is of the expanded edition and includes all the splendid engravings of the original. For those who do not know this work there is a treat in store, not only because of the variety and elegance of the hundreds of recipes, but also because of their simplicity. This was the first recipe book to give a list of ingredients and a time for cooking each recipe (an entirely original idea of Eliza Acton's). For those lucky enough to possess a precious original edition, here is a copy that can be used in the kitchen. Eliza Acton's receipts show English cookery at its very best, before the over-elaboration of late Victorianism overtook it. She was writing for small families, so quantities in the recipes hardly need to be altered, and her insistence throughout on the very best and most wholesome ingredients is in accord with our thinking today. She tested all the dishes herself; on the rare occasions where they were not, she says so and gives her sources. Her personality shows strongly all through the book; she was precise, orderly, very observant and mistress of an inestimable prose style, so she can be read for pleasure as well as use. Very little is known about her life. Elizabeth Ray has done some original research, fleshed out the somewhat shadowy profile we have had of her up to now, and corrected some earlier misconceptions about her.

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