Modern Cookery for Private Families (Southover Press Historic Cookery and Housekeeping) - Hardcover

Eliza Acton

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1781798915 ISBN 13: 9781781798911

Publisher: Equinox Publishing Ltd, 2019

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author:

Elizabeth Eliza Acton (1799 -1859) was an English poet and cook who produced one of the country s first cookbooks aimed at the domestic reader rather than the professional cook or chef, Modern Cookery for Private Families. In this book she introduced the now-universal practice of listing the ingredients and suggested cooking times with each recipe. Isabella Beeton s bestselling Mrs Beeton s Book of Household Management (1861) was closely modeled on it. Elizabeth Ray studied at the London School of Economics and was a social worker in London and Kent for many years. She has always been interested in domestic and social history, and has written several cookery books and a biography of Alexis Soyer, as well as contributing to such magazines as Homes and Gardens and À La Carte and writing a food column for The Sunday Telegraph. Elizabeth Ray is the widow of wine writer Cyril Ray (with whom she wrote Wine with Food.

About this edition

• Publisher: Equinox Publishing Ltd
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1781798915
• ISBN 13: 9781781798911
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 544
• Editor: Elizabeth Ray