What Mrs Beeton did to us

I have a beaten up old copy of a book from the late 19th century that sits among my collection of recipe volumes in my study at home. When I retrieve this particular doorstop of a tome, the back falls off and gnarled pages flutter to the floor. I pick them up and recipe 1,790 catches my eye: ‘Bread and Butter Pudding, Steamed’. It’s one recipe among 2,070 odd pages and it’s from a collection that is widely considered to be one of the greatest cookbooks in the English language.

Beeton’s Book of Household Management was first published in 1861 (the ‘Mrs’ was added in later additions). It was a publishing sensation at the time, its popularity has endured for a further 150 years and it is still in print today.

In fact so enamoured by her work was the distinguished food writer and cook Gerard Baker that last year he published the results of his painstaking efforts to test and re-cook 220 of her recipes; up-dating them for the modern cook in his book Mrs