47. Eliza Acton: Christmas Pudding Recipe and Cookbook pioneer!

Eliza Acton: The Pioneer of Modern Cookbooks

This episode discusses the life and contributions of Eliza Acton, a Victorian poet who unexpectedly authored the world's first cookbook aimed at home cooks. The hosts highlight Acton's significant innovations in recipe writing, emphasizing practical and detailed instructions that were revolutionary at the time. The episode also touches on the history of publishing, the eventual overshadowing of Acton's work by Mrs. Beeton's plagiarized book, and how Acton's legacy is being revived today. The discussion is filled with various anecdotes, historical context, and humorous commentary.

Sources for today are:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/72482/72482-h/72482-h.htm
https://brightonmuseums.org.uk/discovery/history-
stories/first-woman-eliza-acton-writer-of-the-first-cook-book-
aimed-at-the-home-cook/
https://www.tonbridgehistory.org.uk/people/eliza-acton.htm
https://www.mentalfloss.com/food/eliza-acton-cookbooks-
food-history
The Language of Food by Anabel Abbs

00:00 Charlie's Delivery Job 
02:14 Introducing Eliza Acton
04:17 The Golden Age of Publishing
09:07 Eliza Acton's Early Life and Poetry
15:13 The Birth of Modern Cookery
17:43 Revolutionizing Recipes: The Birth of Modern Cookbooks
19:02 The Poet and the Pragmatist: Eliza Acton's Unique Approach
19:54 Lessons in Chemistry: The Science Behind Cooking
20:35 Charming Illustrations and Personal Touches
21:39 Preventing Food Waste: A Vision Ahead of Its Time
23:27 Sassy Recipes: The Poor Author's Pudding vs. The Publisher's Pudding
24:06 The Legacy of Modern Cookery
27:16 The Unexpected Rival: Mrs. Beaton's Plagiarism
28:51 Eliza Acton's Enduring Influence
30:26 Final Thoughts and Recommendations

Transcript

audio1507710367: 0:07

I have a, we update for you. Um, so, you know, I was saying Charlie was off on a shift, a trial shift of a delivery job. Yes. And he didn't think it was gonna be for him. He stuck with it because he agreed to do it. So he saw it out, which, you know, good advice from dad there. But, um, he ended up actually thinking, this is all right. He made a ton of tips. I think that's why he think it went all right. Exactly. But what cracks we know your price. Charlie, what cracks me up was after I was talking about like how you know, what a lovely young man he is and how, you know, mature and everything he's becoming, I came home and having. Talked some considerable trash about the state of the kitchen of the place that he was, you know, supposed to do well. That's my question. Delivery for Yes. Well, I come in and he goes, Hey, if you're hungry, I brought home food. And I was like, he did not. He did not. He did. Where are these boys, moms? He's still a student at heart. He, he's like, yes, free food versus. Sketchy looking kitchen. Um, but yeah, there you go. He, his price is very interesting. Free food, his tips and a handful of tips Good on him. You know, he's getting his money. He's, he's chasing that bag. I'm, I'm fine with it. Love Charlie. But he was so principled at the time. Yeah. And all it took, because a couple of hands, it. Squished, uh, fives and suddenly, yeah. That's a good story. That's a good story for the future girlfriend, that his, his morals are so easily swayed. Yes. Yeah. Good for him. He's got stuff to pay for. He's, he's on, he wouldn't allowed to be open if it was that. But I was thinking on the way home as well. Exactly. There'll be hygiene if it was that hard. Yeah. I think there'll be hygiene checks and stuff like that. Maybe was spoiled by the other company maybe.'cause they're so, the other company were like, who knew? So maybe he's comparing the Ritz to whatever of pizza to, you know, to fault shop. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe that's what, maybe he just needed to get through that. That's fascinating. I love Charlie. Alright, so yeah, today, um, doing a little chitty chat about food is a nice segue because we are going to speak about a woman who. Ended up in that arena, although that wasn't what she thought she was going to do with her life when she started. Okay. Which is relatable. I think we never, none of us know Exactly is she's gonna be, be more by tips. She, I guess you could draw, you could draw a little parallel with the financial necessity piece, but yeah. Let's, let's, uh, let's get into it. Are you ready? I'm so ready. Alright. How are you Vicki? How are you doing? I'm good. Yeah, thanks. How are you? Yeah, doing good. Ready to roll? Um, yeah, I will. I will begin it. Uh, so yes, sometimes someone will come along who being in the right place at the right time or the wrong place at the wrong time finds the course of their life diverted into a completely unexpected path. And I hear that one such person. Oh, yes. Um, one such is today's lady who is Eliza Acton, uh, Victorian. A poet and unexpectedly, the author of the World's first cookbook aimed at the home cook. There's a little picture of her there. It's later life. I know. It's so, it's so arbitrary. I had no idea about this person. My friend Theresa recommended a novel about her life and it kind of got Teresa. Interested, and I'm so glad she did because it's fascinating. Um, our sources for today are, uh, project Gutenberg, where you can read the entirety of Eliza Acton Cookbook. Highly recommended, um, the Brighton Museums. Uh, had a story about her Tonbridge history. Uh, museum also had a story about her, because it's a bit of a local interest thing. There's a cool website you would've come across called Mental Floss, and they had an article about her. And then there is the novel, which is called The Language of Food by an author called Annabel Abs. Right. Nice. So. On this damp and wintry morning, I know that you're thinking deep down inside what I'd really love is a condensed history of the publishing industry in Britain, circa 1476 to 1860. Is that you are Damn right, Cara. That is up exactly my morning coffee. Lucky you strap in. Here we go. Okay. So I'll try to keep it really brief, but it is important, um, to the story. So in London. In 1476, the first mechanical printing press arrived, and then it was kind of really rarefied use it. It was all very regulated, hundreds of years pass, and in 1695, the UK government relaxed censorship and control over printed materials. We're gonna whiz on to the 18th century as, uh, that's when the first kind of concepts of copyright laws were introduced, which factors into our story largely in terms of how they did not work as effectively as you would hope. And then we're gonna zoom ahead again, and now it's the industrial revolution of the 19th century. And you have this kind of perfect storm where. The technological advances, um, like an a, an easier to use steam powered printing press machinery that allowed wood pulp to be turned into paper much more easily. Uh, typesetting machinery could be manufactured more easily, things could be distributed by the new railway networks. All of that came together at the same time as. Tax was abolished on printed items. And the public through this kind of like golden age, were being, given better chances for literacy and education and all of those things fed in together to lead to what was called the golden age of publishing. That's a lot of information, so, right. Um, yeah. I never appreciated a, that we were censored and this is in this country, right. So there was censorship on that, which is so interesting considering all the free speech Jitt chatter. Sorry, go on. It was at the time when, suppose it being new technology, the printed word. Was sacrosanct and the government and the church to some extent were sort of in control of what was printed. And if you ever read any of the Hillary Mantel books, you will know there was a real. Lethal interest in controlling the printed word, the Bible in its original Latin version versus English. And so think, think along those vibes. Like we have to be really controlled about what gets put into print. And I suppose when only a handful of people can read, then the, the majority of your populace goes, you know, whatever, do what you want. But as people became more educated and. Printing was democratized by technology. Yeah. You got a, a more free printing trade. And it also made me think how lucky we were with the guy who invented the internet who said, this is free for all. Like if he hadn't done that, that could have history, could have repeated itself. That's interesting. And that's another thing I thought of. And then, um, then the tax on printed items. Do we have tax today? We must have tax today on printed items like books. We didn't honestly tell you, I don't, I don't think books are tax. No way. Let me check. That's insane. I love that you're checking your sources. Sources. Sorry. No, it's good. It's, it's robust. It is the kind of thing we like. Yeah. So it is tax unless it's educational. Educational is zero VAT. Most standard examples are vt. Oh, no, no, no. Sorry, I've misunderstood. So. VAT on things like diaries, calendars, forms, invoices, vouchers, stickers, no VAT on books, newspapers, journals, brochures, pamphlets, picture books, maps, huh. They're worthwhile. They want people to buy them. So, well, that's adorable. Yay. For books. Bit of a, a change of thinking. So into this, into this sort of cauldron of. Books becoming more available, books becoming more printable and distributable. There's a bit of a feeding frenzy. Let's let's publish what we can. And at that time, that is when, uh, miss Eliza Acton was born. She joins us in battle in Sussex in 1799. And, um, she grew up in a humble house connected to the brewery where her father worked. Mm-hmm. She was educated in keeping with those times and then. Grew up in Suffolk and eventually co-ran a boarding school for girls. So you can see she's kind of interested in education in the written word and academia. Yeah. That's where her life is headed, and this is where things take a bit of a turn for the scandalous. Um, we, I do not know what actually happens. It's not particularly well documented. But I'll say there's gossip afoot. So Eliza goes off to France and there are rumors of gossip. Her already gossip. Yeah. Gossip is, is bubble in a way. She may have been, uh, jilted by a sweetheart. Yes. Yes. Kara, for the gossip, this is great. On the gossip, some of the sources that talk about her. Leaving for France at that time. Talk about how women of her social class were often sent to Europe if they were inconveniently pregnant outside of marriage, and then they would have the baby and adopt it to your, you are pouring feel on this fire, Kara, I'm just, I'm just reporting what was in the sources, but none of them know for sure. Maybe she just wanted to go on vacation. Right. The poor woman. Yeah. But whatever happened, she went off to France for a few years and then returned to England. Sweet. At that point, she, she moves back to Tunbridge. It's 1826. You'll know from our condensed history of the printing trade, lots of publication going on. She, at that point, puts out her own first poetry pamphlet. Did she And it's, it's, yeah, just a faring back. It's Well, yes, and more so perhaps than even you'd think, because at that time, in order to have something published small scale like that, that wasn't commissioned, you had to go to the publisher with a list of subscribers, which were people who had agreed in advance to pay for your work. Kind of like a self-publishing vibe. Or Instagram followers. Like that's a lot of the publishing today is that you won't get your book published unless you get so many followers on Instagram the same. So something's never, never changed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Sorry, so she's, she's out there, she's hustling, she's getting those, getting those likes and, and follows. Um, she. Manages to get this thing published and the gist of a lot of the poetry is the scorned woman. So imagine Taylor Swift loving a bit of melodrama, loving a bit of nature imagery more than she loves a catchy hook. And that's the vibe. I have got some excerpts from Eliza's poetry for you to read if you would be so kind, give you a little flavor of that. I'm very excited. This sounds great. And this is her about being jilted. Hmm. Potentially. Heather, see what you think. See what you think. Go cold and fickle. Trier. Go and bear thy traits. Smiles are far when none like me, two well shall know how hollow and how vain they are. Take back thy ring for I have learned to hear thy name with hopeless heart and off with sickening soul have turned from what thou were to what thou art. They said the words I love to hear. We are whispered in another's ear with that sweet smile and tender tone, which thou madis my heart fine. Own. It's so swift. Yeah. Okay. It's so swift. I'll give you the titles of these poems. The first one was cold and fickle rifer. Oh, sorry. Assumed it was One second. No, no, there's, sorry. It sort of read that way the way I put it in. But there's three, sorry. Take back your ring and a bande. So this chick, something happened to her, right? Didn't it? I mean, yes. Reading that something happens. She's heartbroken. Yeah, she is heartbroken. And she then is published for her heartbreak. History and she's monetizing that girl. Good for her. She's, she, she is chasing that coin. Good for her. I like that. However, in the fullness of time, people don't talk kindly about her poetry. They judge her as cliche, sentimental, banal, romanticized. It's not very nice. But you know, she wasn't just doing it for the art. She was working through some stuff. We've all been there. That's, that's fine. Just, yeah, just getting out there and putting her heart on the page, but mm-hmm. Despite that love of poetry that need to write poetry, it wasn't gonna be her destiny for her whole life. So, okay. I, I gotta be a little bit careful here because foolishly I started reading the novel. Before doing the research, so I need to like really clearly separate in my head the things that the novel depicts and the research. But yes, it's not an autobiography. It's not a biography, it's a novel. No, it's not. It's a novel. It's it's historical fiction and there's lots of truth in it, but that it takes a really clear view and basically what what happens is Eliza goes to this publisher with the idea to publish another poetry collection. And for whatever reason that publisher says, no, we don't want to publish that. But we do want you to do something entirely new, which is a book about food, A book about cookery. What? And in the novel. Yeah. What do you mean exactly? That was pretty much her response in the novel. She's like, absolutely not. What are you talking about? And then she eventually warms up to the idea because of financial necessity, fine reality. It's less clear. She might have been up for it immediately, but what is known is that her father was declared bankrupt at about that time, and he then went off to France, go figure. And she did. France is the land, France is the place where you go if you're in Suffolk and things are going south. Um, literally. Um, so yeah, she, she took the cookbook job and what I super admire is that she. Absolutely got to work. She didn't sort of grudgingly do it. She threw herself at it wholeheartedly and spent 10 years making this extraordinary work. So the cookbook, we will call modern cookery throughout this talk because the full titles fit longer. I've got it for here for you to read in a second. But yeah, it's a mammoth. It's just over 500 pages. And if you would be kind enough to read the entire title. Modern Cookery in All Its Branches Kan reduced to a system of easy practice for the use of private families in a series of practical receipts. Which have been strictly tested and are given with the most minute exactness. What do you mean? It's, that's, that's a title. That's a title and a half That is a mission statement. Where is it? You know? I don't know if that is a picture of the cover. It must just be on the spine in the smallest print you've ever seen. I, I think it's absolutely charming. Yes, you're true. You could, could see a reader standing in a bookshop holding this thing. The whole marketing pitch is in the title. Well, and if Exactly, yeah. If that didn't persuade you, if you flipped it open on the inside facing page, it, you would see it was dedicated to the young housekeepers of England. Nice. So she knows her target market. She's pinpointed it. Exactly. She's rude. Business woman. And once that reader got that comb, they will not have been disappointed because okay, she has got this completely novel approach. Cookbooks that existed up to this point in time were only intended as sort of. Memory helpers for professional chefs. So people who worked in commercial kitchens, people who worked in, you know, a big manner house in the kitchen of that house. They didn't bother with little pesky details, just jotted notes. Add, add some eggs or do this in the French tray. Add some eggs. Like seriously, literally, this is how recipes were up until Eliza got involved. That sounds so stressful. Horrible Eliza's recipes. Were aimed really intentionally at the kind of home cooks that like you and I are people who like to cook. We like food, but we need specifics in order to get it started. Like we, we need advice. Believe it or not. Nothing like that had ever been printed before. So there's a little excerpt there of her recipe from Raspberry Jam. Very straightforward. It talks exactly about how many pounds of raspberries, how much sugar, how many minutes those. That hadn't happened before. Those ingredients being separately pulled out, the times, the methods of mixing and so on hadn't been described before. It would just say, raspberry jam, make the raspberry jam. Like that was about the vibe. So do you think that's because people were like just living off the land a lot more, just like, um, I suppose make, make do with what you have. Maybe or family recipes would be passed on in oral tradition. Yeah.'cause it, again, we're at a time where literacy of a common person in a common household is kind of new. And so up till now, perhaps things were jotted down and handed on. But really you just learned at your mother's hip and that that was how you knew. Yeah. Okay. So you memorized it. Yeah. Yeah. Which means, you know, the things your mother knew and her mother before her. Mm-hmm. But this, this method of compiling a cookbook with cooking times ingredient measurements and methods just opened it out to people. And so. She was, she was a poet. She had a poet's soul, but she also had a sort of pragmatism about her. There's a quote from her here about why she wanted to add those details to her recipes. It is the want of a scientific basis, which is given rise to so many absurd and hurtful methods of preparing food. So she's coming at it from a health and safety. Point of view health and safety. Yes. And, and more. We'll kind of come back to that in a second. But yeah, she, she really wanted it to be robust and rigorous and scientific, not just. Uh, not just airy fairy and, and oh, you know, this is how we've always done it and, you know, perhaps that wasn't the most efficient or sensible way. So have you read the book, um, lessons in Chemistry? I have, yeah. It feels that's a really good parallel, right? Yeah, it feels very, obviously that's a lot later work in history. That's 1960s. But the, yeah, the same. She was wanting wasn't to, she was, she was a chemist and wanted that. That rigor to be applied to things for, for similar reasons. Because you want the predictable results. Yeah. Even now, having cooked for literally decades at my age, I am really frustrated if a recipe says something like, add some oil, like give me measurements. I just need the information. So that was very much the energy she was bringing and although that practicality was important to her, she still had her. Love of the arts. I think because you see the language of the book and the illustrations in the book really show beauty for, for lack of a better word, I have put here a quote from her introduction to the book to give you a flavor of her kind of use of language, if you would be kind enough to read it. Sure. When both the mind and body are exhausted by the toils of the day, heavy or unsuitable food so far from recruiting their in fee board, powers prostrates their energies more completely. Eat to live should be the motto by the spirits of which all writers upon it should be guided. Oh, she's quite flay. Yeah, she's, she's got a little pizazz about her. Yeah. And you can see some of the illustrations there, which I hope we'll put up on the socials. There's all kinds of bits and pieces throughout the cookbook. They're so charming. Yes. So the thing you asked about the previous quote about, um, you know, food being prepared in, an absurd hurtful way. A way, yeah. This is very, now she was really interested in food waste and preventing food waste and recommending that kind of nose to tail eating culture centuries before it became proper. Um, and there's another quote from her here on that same topic, if you're. Up for it. It may be safely ave the good GRI is the best and trust economy. Turning to full account every wholesome article of food and converting into palatable meals, what the ignorant either render un eatable or throw away in disdain. So as a vegetarian, I think you'll respond to her. She has so many rants throughout the cookbook about badly cooked vegetables She, how inedible they are and like over boiling something or you know, yeah, we could have bonded over cauliflower, you. An overcooked cauliflower is beneath disdain. Absolutely disgusting. But she was like, this is how you do it. So it's nice and it can be done. Um, she also like poured her own personality into the book, which was a novelty at the time. Most cookery, again, being a very kind of professional manual, was very dry. Like Hanes manual style. She threw this like conversational approach. To it made it more appealing. She would talk about if a dish had gone wrong, a kind of like Nigel thing. That's nice. She'd be like, oh, what do we like? I'm one of you. Yeah, yeah. Just, just like everybody else, she tried every single recipe in the cookbook at home before putting it in. Maybe that's why it took her 10 years. Um, yeah. She also had a bit of sass about her. So one of her dishes is a recipe for a sort of stale bread in boiled milk pudding with a little tiny bit of sugar and a little bit of spice, and that is named the Poor Author's Pudding. And the next recipe is called the Publisher's Pudding, which has things like almonds and marrow and raisins and citrin. Brandy and her opening note on that one is the publisher's pudding. Can scarcely be made too rich? Oh, it's just a bit She did not. She did. She did. She was, um, she was coming at'em. That's, that's fine. He was sassy. I love it though. I think that is the combination of qualities that precision she. Empathy for her reader. She wanted to test things herself. She took it very seriously before recommending them. She had a beauty of language, these charming illustrations and just personality, and it made modern cookery into a tremendous success. So yeah, that, that focus on telling everyday people, you can cook tasty food, it's within your reach. It's down to earth. Yeah, it's possible. It's, it's possible. It's reliable. It kept her cookbook. With 13 revisions in print until 1918, and the work outlived the author. She died relatively young in 1859, so. We're nearly gonna move on for modern cookery, but before we do, I have to talk a little tiny bit about the food. It had so many firsts in it. She had, recipes for spaghetti, which she called s spaghetti and sort of referred to as Naples vermicelli, which apparently made it more nice, understandable. At the time. Whatever. Um, she had. Some of the first recipes Victorians would've even heard of, let alone seen for chutneys and curries food from other countries. Did she, she kind of, yeah. She went out out to her friends and said, what have you eaten? What's good? What do you, and then she would try those recipes out. The recipe list alone is worth reading. And again, if you go to Project Gutenberg, they have published it in full. You can just whiz through. It's such an insight into the kind of things that they would eat at the time, like. Uh, mock turtle soup and stuff. You're like, what even is that? But then things that we would recognize today, there's, there's a little excerpt here where it's light buns of different kinds. The Exeter bun. Oh, like, ooh, yes, please. Devon Chare. Don't mind to find two. Oh, and there's a little seasonal synchronicity,'cause we're recording this in December. And in this book of firsts, there are two Christmas specific ones to note. So modern cookery has the first printed recipe for a Christmas pudding. Does that, and the first for Brussels sprouts. Oh, so there you go. There's also mixed pause in, is that the pud in there? Is that the Christmas pud? That is her chapter about puddings in general. That's the Oh, okay, okay. Uh, front piece for the, the chapter about puddings. But to me that looked like a Christmas pudding. So it does a little bit, I think. Yeah, for sure. So yeah, this is a adorable good old Eliza, isn't it? Sweet. Yes. Um, things are about to get a little saltier, so just, just bear modern cookery was incredibly popular. Every good Victorian household had a copy. This is, you're too Young. This is a nineties reference, but it made me think of River Cottage Cookbook. Everybody had River Cottage Cookbook in the nineties. This was kind of that of its day and Okay. For people who are listening who are interested in history, it might also bring to mind a book called Mrs. Beaton's book of Household Management. Right. I think that's the one I'm thinking of. I, yes. It's funny, I was just Googling, so I wanted to bring it up, but I couldn't. Well, yeah, I think onto your apron, because that brings us to the unexpected villain of the peace. Oh, so. Modern cookery was eventually knocked off the top spot in British households by Isabella Beaton's, Mrs. Beaton's book of Household Management that was published in 1861 and is still widely in print today. It was a seminal work for British house makers, British cooks. Everybody I think pretty much knows about it. Cornerstone Food Book. But nowadays, scholars and historians have come to understand that Mrs. Beaton's book freely plagiarized from what many of Eliza Acton recipes and not just hers. There are bits and pieces from a lot of different books, all of them given without credit, without credit. Without credit. It's so easy to give credit people. It's so simple, and this is the thing I guess we see in the history of the printing trade that copyright laws had already come into effect. But having a law and enforcing a law are very different matters. So what ultimately happened was Mrs. Beaton's book, which was newer and had more recent techniques, and amalgamated the best of several other cookbooks. Outpaced Acton in the 1860s. Thankfully after Eliza had died, that would've been devastating for her to see, but it sounds as though she may have been aware of the plagiarism, which would've been really frustrating, I'm sure. But nowadays. You know, no, no truth can hide from the sun forever. We now have a turning tide and this awareness of Eliza Acton and what she brought to food cookery, and to helping home cooks has really started to come to light. She's started to gather some support. Um, Delia Smith who. You know, just this legend of British cookery calls her the best writer of recipes in the English language, and people from Jane Gregson to Rick Stein are going to bat for her and talking about the influence of her books and how they can see that's not what her, not Mrs. Beaton's. Yeah. Yeah. So. It's really, it's really starting to come full circle and you know, we just have to know that when we see a recipe that we can follow as, not as trained chef, but just as home cooks, let alone one with personal asides from the author. Mm-hmm. We have Eliza Acton to thank for that. So, uh, I do believe this is the last quote I've incorporated, but just to give you one last little one that I thought was adorable. This is her talking about why we don't cook when we're in a bad mood, and it's from a pineapple marmalade recipe. If the mixture is placed onto a direct heat, it will often convert what would otherwise be excellent preserve into a strange source of compound for which it is difficult to find a name. So it's adorable. I mean, she's, she's there with us in the kitchen. We understand what we're doing because of the way. She brings us in. Um. If you have found her as charming as I have, or if you need a good recipe or Christmas pudding or mince pies, go check out Modern Cookery on Project Gutenberg. You can also look for, um, a non-fiction account of her life called the Real Mrs. Beon. The story of Eliza Acton. Damn coming straight for it or for fiction, the book, uh, that I had been given by Theresa, the Language of Food by Anabel Abs, which I can now finally go ahead and read without fear of pulling fiction into our talk. Oh, and that book has apparently been optioned by one of the American television networks, so it should be made into a series in the future. Oh, that's exciting. So that's fun. And yeah, that's all I've got for you today, but. That has made me hungry. I was thinking I might go and try her Yorkshire Plowman salad, which I thought sounded delightful. That sounds delightful, but you could feel free to peruse the different recipes and pick one that you might be interested in. Oh yeah. Lobster sausages. Oh, Nathan. I know. It's so weird. It goes so well. No, I was thinking that I'm doing, um, what am I doing for the choir thing? Mince pies. Maybe I could do Eliza's mince pies. Maybe. Oh, I, I, are they risky? Caution? They're risky because I think they incorporate very Victorian things like beef seit. So they're Okay. They might not be vegetarian friendly, but that's Victorians for you in it.'cause I was thinking about making mince pies and I was thinking, do I even bother? Because you're gonna make you pre by the pastry. Pre by the mince meat, like what am I doing? I mean, just to, you can make, you can make from scratch if you know, you can, if you feel, I would never make pastry from scratch. Even Mary Berry doesn't make, yeah, Mary Berry doesn't make pastry, so it's like, what am I doing? Nah. So then I was like, maybe I should just buy some, and it kind of took all the joy out of it. I don't know. I'm a bit, bit already. You could your own filling. I would probably, I would halfway house it. I reckon I would buy the pastry. Make the filling and then make the filling. Yeah. You can make it your own. I'll have, have a look. This Miss Elizabeth Beaton? No. Was it Isabella Beaton? Yeah. What, what possessed her? I wondered if what possessed her was the commanding words of her publisher. Because you know, the person who's printing the stuff, they're the commissioner really. They're the ones who say, this is what it needs to contain and. I wonder if there was pressure on her to take the best of what was out there and who knows? In a meeting room? Yes. Yes, of course. We'll give credit to all of the sources. Like you don't know it. I, I'm gonna try not to judge harshly. What I don't fully understand, but it doesn't sound great, does it? I just wonder what the, what the why. I just. I guess if there's a successful thing that's kind of been knocking around for a while, I mean, this is story as old as time. It's like a knockoff, isn't it? Yeah. You rip it off, make it a little bit, freshen it up with some new material and Hey Presto bestselling book that's still around hundreds of years later. Yeah, it's easy money, isn't it, I guess. Yeah. But AI says that, um, Mrs. Beaton's last ingenious was not actually in creating original recipes, but in her innovation and systemic. Presentation of them, a clear and consistent way of presentation, including useful notes and pricing, seasonality and social etiquette, which made the information accessible and highly popular for the Victorian middle class. So they're saying it's, it's not all in the recipe, I guess is what she's saying? No, that she's, I guess like Eliza Acton. Adding value hasn't added something new and useful into the, into the mix. What a pesky monkey. Mm. Interesting. I didn't know what to expect today. But not that, that is delightful. It's pleasant, isn't it? Delightful. And did she ever is considered, it said 10 years between her, for her to write it. So what was she doing? Like if her father was, I genuinely know whether she had an advance on the work or what, but I do know that. At some point she became a cookery correspondent for several home journals. Oh, okay. She published other works about food as well. Something about bread, she kind of be, she immersed herself in that world, but whether those things happened after she was published, cookery book writer, or whether they were whilst she was doing it, I'm not sure. Mm-hmm. Um, there's this whole like, murky thing about her mom and her moving to this house and then her dad. Goes off to France'cause he is bankrupt and they stay in the house. first thing was a pamphlet. There's no reason she could make other pamphlets, you know what I mean? Like, it didn't have to be. She did have poetry published in journals. Whether it was paid for or not, I don't know. So yeah, all the sniffy people who say, oh, it wasn't very good, well they can put that in their pipe and smoke it. That's impressive. Somebody thought it was good enough. It's still in print. Print now, you know, still out there. And also I think that shows how much she. Cared. You know what I mean? Yeah. About her output as well. If it took 10 years to perfect. Yeah. 500 odd pages. That's a lot of recipes to try. Wow. Yeah. Nice. Nice, nice, nice. Well, I never knew that. Thank you so much Co. Either. It was a fun one to research. Thank you for listening.

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