Modern Cookery for Private Families (Classic Voices in Food) [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

If you enjoy reading cookery books then you will love this one. Forget glossy photographs of the finished dish which serve only to depress the average cook. Forget celebrity endorsements of particular branded ingredients. This book - first published in 1845 - is nothing but recipes, useful diagrams and line drawings.

There is an invaluable conversion chart at the beginning of the book for conversion from metric to imperial measurements which also shows a modern interpretation of cool, hot, very hot etc oven temperatures. There is a comprehensive index and a glossary of terms used in the book. Eliza Acton would have been cooking on a range which did not have exact temperature regulation. Cookery is not always an exact science as demonstrated in this book.

The quantities used in the recipes may be too large for modern families but it is easy to halve or even quarter the quantities to make recipes manageable for today's cooks. The recipes are divided into twenty seven sections - starting with soups and moving through sauces, boiling and roasting, boiled puddings, baked puddings, pickles, confectionary etc.

To modern readers cooking times given may seem excessive though perhaps some of it can be looked at as akin to slow cooker recipes. In fact I think many of the recipes could work very well in today's slow cookers.

Eliza Acton provides her own observations at the end of many of the recipes as well as providing variations on many of them. There are footnotes providing further information and offering opinions. On page 310 for example she comments on the appalling waste of food amongst the better off and how this could be better used in feeding the poor. She calls it `one of the most serious domestic abuses amongst us'. Clearly waste of perfectly edible food is not a new concern!

This is a book to browse through and to wonder at how English cookery has changed over the years. Butter and cream are used in many recipes and lard for frying. However in spite of frying in lard the author always advocates draining food after frying until it is quite dry.

There are clear indications that the author and presumably her readers were interested in the effect of food on health such as this from the section on cakes `. . . more illness is caused by habitual indulgence in the richer and heavier kinds of cakes than would easily be credited by persons who have given no attention to the subject.' She says she has included a small number of cake recipes because her readers like them. She herself does not consider meringues unwholesome because they are so light.

I was surprised at how many herbs and spices are used in the recipes and how the author emphasises the importance of fresh ingredients as well as using up left-overs. She includes pasta and polenta recipes as well as curries and recipes from many European countries.

This is a marvellous book to browse through and to try out the recipes and it is a useful historical document especially for readers of Anthony Trollope and Charles Dickens for example as they will find the dishes mentioned in those authors' novels listed in this book. I can see I will be browsing through this book for many years to come.

Eliza Acton was born in 1799 - Modern Cookery for Private Families was published in 1845 and had an immediate and enduring success. Modern Cookery is a classic cookery book and Acton was, at all times, a practical cook. She often provides several versions of a dish - one economical or common (cheaper) and one `superlative' version if you really want to make a splash. A doorstop of a book it provided a Victorian housewife with everything she would need to instruct her cook or cook for herself.

In her 1855 preface Acton encourages economy and healthy eating and abhors waste. Much like some modern cooks do today she praises fresh, unadulterated food which actually gives quite a modern sound to her writing. She states that healthy eating is available to all and tries to encourage the right mode of cooking. Obviously there are a few things which need adjusting such as cooking times for vegetables - boiling peas for 25 minutes would more likely give you a form of mushy peas!

Modern Cookery is a brilliant piece of social history (she doesn't go into any sort of household management like Mrs Beeton because this is a straight-forward cookery book) and a really enjoyable read as well as being quite a useful cookery book (if you have a bit of time). There is a useful conversion chart at the front of the book for weights, volumes and oven temperatures which helps with some of the antiquated advice.

This book is fantastic. Apparently it was the source for a lot of Mrs Beeton's book, and the text here is the 1855 revision of the 1845 original (covered with what would appears to be a mid 1930's cloth cover style!). This book differs from a modern book in many ways... apart from the use of Imperial measurements (bushels? pecks?) Eliza was writing before the advent of Gas cookery, so there is a good deal of reference to the type of coal/wood (in one case paper... when cooking with "a conjuror") fire. Another mark of the text's age is an obsession with baking your own bread (with or without yeast).... because in 1845, good bread was hard to come by, with bakers using adulterated ingredients to maximise profit to the great detriment of the purchasers health. A list of the muck used to make ingredients go further at this time would make your hair curl.....
Eliza is extremely helpful in listing both the recipes (spelt "receipts" throughout) and observations as to what happened when the recipe was used... this could be done to great advantage in the present day! She is thorough in describing the BASICS. Know your building blocks! Build your foundations right (providing plain fare for a modest table) and you can then try the more advanced stuff. She even has a word for those who habitually work by guess in the realm of measurements; while acknowledging that some folks can "wing it" she points out that far more can't and that one should be very VERY familar with the appearance of the right quantities before dispensing with the scales.
I feel inspired by it; there is good sound advice for the amateur and practised cook here albeit preserved in a slightly archaic, Dickensian way of speaking. (after all, Oliver Twist was only 5 years in print whan this little tome appeared!)
There is even an excellent index... no entry for "gruel" though.....
Definitely worth reading when you have time to absorb it... and I would suspect there will be quite a few copies with pencil notes of the converted metric quantities in the margins for direct reference in the kitchen.