Cookery nook

Delia Smith first published her recipe ‘My Classic Christmas Cake’ 40 years ago.

Delia Smith first published her recipe ‘My Classic Christmas Cake’ 40 years ago. The cake re-appeared in 1990 in Delia Smith’s Christmas, and now pops up again unchanged in Delia’s Happy Christmas (Ebury, £25). Though some of her newer recipes reflect changes that have crept up on us in the past 19 years (year-round salmon and the ubiquitous cupcake), her best Christmas recipes are the recycled ones. Since Delia’s How to Cook (1998), the first book where she dropped the Smith, beautiful photography by the world’s best photographers (Petrina Tinslay in this case) has made up for the lack of personality in her writing. But this is a useful as well as beautiful book, a great Christmas or wedding present, and as we have to tackle eight days of Christmas cooking soon, we may as well buckle down to it ‘with calm control’, as Delia suggests.