In praise of Delia Smith

They’re now such common ingredients that you can buy them in all but the smallest shops: halloumi, pesto, couscous, salsa, roasted peppers. But their origins as culinary staples can be traced back to the publication 30 years ago of Delia Smith’s Summer Collection.

This book and the accompanying TV series changed British cooking forever. Delia didn’t invent much but she brought things to the mainstream.

The unprecedented success of Summer Collection – both the book and the show – also made Smith into the biggest figure in British cooking for a decade or more. The follow-up, entitled, rather obviously, Winter Collection, built on Summer’s success to become one of the best-selling books of the decade in any field. 

Nineties Delia was bigger than Blur, bigger than Oasis. Her subsequent three-volume How to Cook was so popular it was credited with causing weekly runs on ingredients and kit. Not just specialist pans, but even eggs themselves would sell out in the days after she’d broadcast a new omelette recipe.