Somewhat concerning food

Alice Thomas Ellis is not a person to be trusted — in the kitchen. I am surprised to find this. I have always admired her elsewhere, in her novels for instance. But there is no doubt that when it comes to food she is simply left-wing. She makes steak and kidney pudding without the kidney. That’s bad enough, but the reason is worse: the first she had smelt (unsurprisingly) of urine. Adult cooks should have got over childish impressions. She does not care for pesto: it smells of silage. She draws woodcock. She finds gazpacho, of all things, ‘a nuisance to prepare’. And she ‘could not get hold of asafoetida’, though Asian shops are awash with it.

Now I am untrustworthy, especially in the garage and up ladders. Being unsound somewhere is nothing to be ashamed of, especially if, like Alice Thomas Ellis, you are so sound elsewhere. And she is sound in this book too. For despite the title and the chapters allegedly about various foods — soup, meat, fish, pies and, vegetables — this is not about food at all. It is a marvellous collection of extracts from various food, housekeeping and medical advice manuals and social commentaries over the last two centuries. To be sure, most of these are also at first sight about food, but their interest and amusing nature comes from a much wider coverage of manners. You are not then going to learn much about how to cook fish and flesh from this book; indeed I suggest you double up on the kidneys. But you are going to be entertained and instructed about the extraordinary attitude of the English to food and related matters. These advice books are a goldmine and the author mines them very well.

There’s a terrific chapter on the servant problem, which was not only the well-known difficulties of getting and keeping them but of managing untrained, drunken and overworked labour in unventilated kitchens: ‘the dirty, dowdy maid-of-all-work who often ruled … bachelors with a rod of iron’.