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FEATURES
Before there were celebrity chefs, there was Marguerite Patten (continued)Copyright © 2004 Bruce Tober All Rights Reserved
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A 1912 Mrs Beetons |
Although it's been said that as a child, she had no cookbooks in her house, Mrs Patten explained to us, "actually it was no specific cook book. Mother would have had I think Mrs Beeton's and she would have probably had the cookbook that went with the cooker. So yes, I would have used some of the recipes in those one or two cookery books that were on hand. And I would have seen my mother doing things and instinctively copied some of those things. And then , of course, as I got more experience, went off and started creating things of my own.". |
"I only took over the cooking," she continued, "from time to time, not the entire household. The reason I started cooking early was I was going to a different school from my mother and had longer holidays. It was when she went back that I took over some of the cooking, probably for just a week at a time."
She hadn't known her paternal grandmother, "sadly she died when I was a baby, I think between one and two years old. But according to my mother, she was an absolutely wonderful cook. My mother often said, when I cooked something successfully, 'Oh, you're like your grandmother.'
We asked Mrs Patten which cookbook is her all-time favourite. "Probably one which will surprise you," she said, as I'm a home economist, not a chef. Escoffier. I love the way he writes, I think he was a very talented man. And I think he was a very interesting man. And that comes through in his writing.
"Also I'm a great devotee of Elizabeth David," she adds." I think when her first book came out, it was when we were still in the greyness of the post-war period. And she brought sunshine, she began talking about the Mediterranean and the blue skies. And somehow, I always say that sunlight came into Britain through her books."
| And as to which one of those she would have to immediately replace if it were lost, "Escoffier and LaRousse's Gastronomique. I find both extremely helpful. If I want to look up something LaRousse is a wonderful volume to have. I wouldn't like to be without it." |
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Naturally enough, our next question was of her own books, which one she considers her best. "That's quite
difficult to decide," she replies, "because as I look back on them I enjoyed writing all of them.
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"I think of the modern ones, however, A Century of British Cooking, because that combines history and food. The older I get the more interested I am in history, the history of food. My favourite books that discuss the history of food are by Michelle Berriedale-Johnson. she's written several books on the subject. |
"A more modern one was The Coronation Cookbook. Buckingham Palace let us have the banquet menus of Edward VII, George V, George VI and Elizabeth. So that was fun, because they let us have the menus. But not the recipes. So I had to create the recipes and hope that the Queen wouldn't come out and say, 'That wasn't how it was.' So that was a challenge and it was fun."
Although she learnt to cook of necessity and at a much younger age than many today, she said that a young person needing to learn to cook today has a wide choice of books. "Of mine, I wrote books for schools and I wrote Learning to Cook. Those were really taking young people by the hand, and saying, 'look dear, this is how you do it. It won't go wrong.'
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"And going on to my bigger books I think my Step by Step Cookery which did exactly the same thing. Those books made it very clear what you did first and what you then did next. They carried you right the way through the recipes and meals." |
"That's a very difficult question," she says, "because there are so many cookery books now. And so many different requirements. I think Delia Smith makes it very clear. I think if a family has one of her books, they've got a very, very sure cookery book."
Which response elicits the natural follow-up query, "Of the current generation of writers, who's the best?"
But on that question, she wouldn't be drawn. "I honestly... it's
not that I can't answer that, but I'm NOT going to answer that. Because I think each of them has something to offer.
"When people ask me, 'which cookery book shall I buy?', I say 'I'm not going to advise you'." Instead,
she tells them to "go to a library or to a bookshop and look at a number of them. Open them up and turn several
pages and you'll think that's not me, he or she doesn't do the kinds of things I want to do. And if you'll spend
a little time doing that you'll suddenly pick up a book and say, ah, that's the one. So really it's an impossible
question to answer."
After some 40 years, Mrs Patten continues to be published by Hamlyn. "Hamlyn's published The Coronation Cook Book and before that they published The Spam Cook Book. and they published the war-time ones, We'll Eat Again, The Victory Cookbook and The Post-War Kitchen.
"And now Grub Street has published Century of British Cooking, and several of my "Basic Basic Books".
And she's still writing. But now with several health topics in mind.
"The most recent two books I've done are for Harper-Collins Thorsons,
working with a dietician (Jeannette Ewin., PhD) who does the health side (what are the foods that are good) and
I follow up with the recipes. The first one was Eat to Beat
Arthritis. Because diet sheets don't really tell you what
to cook or how, do they. So I follow up with what I hope will be really exciting recipes, so that your diet will
be a pleasure.
"And we've just come out this year with .the Healthy
Gut Cookbook to deal with the kinds of things people get
wrong with their innards and how a wise choice of foods will help to cure or even prevent it getting any worse."
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She celebrated her 90th birthday in November 2005. She tells me she's thinking about updating, revising and re-publishing her 1992 autobiography, What's Cooking? Recipes of a Lifetime, which, of course is a cookery book as well as an autobiography.
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