MRS. BEETON
Sir-I read with a good deal of amusement "1944’s" article, "First Catch Your Hare." So poor Mrs. Beeton, to use a vulgarism, is getting it in the neck. Her mistakes: (1) No recipes for children. Strange to say, special recipes didn’t seem necessary; children were given three good nourishing meals a day, with no bits and pieces in between,
beginning the day, not with an early cup of tea, but with a plate of good Scotch oatmeal porridge — cooked several hours in a double saucepannone of these pre-digested-cooked-in-three-minutes foods. Tinned foods or cooked meats were a rarity-forbidden in my home. Bread, cakes, potted meats, jams,- jellies, pickles, wine, etc:., were all home-made, and I don’t remember any cookery book but "Mrs. Beeton"; neither do I remember any mother being worried to know whether her children were getting enough A.B.C, vitamins or two many X.Y.Z.’s. The vitamin nightmare, like so many other diseases, hadn’t developed in Mrs. Beeton’s day. (2) "1944" says:-‘"The greater part of her book is, in fact, filled with meat recipes." Perhaps pages were missed from the book "1944" had; my copy contains over 2000 pages, with under one-fifth of them devoted to meat recipes. (3) Prices of kitchen furniture-cer-tainly not much use for furnishing now-a-days, but interesting if only to show up the present day stupidity of continually pushing up wages, only to find everything else pushed up mm price. In the days of Mrs. Beeton, 30/- to £2 was a good weekly wage. (4) "Home influence"-I must admit that the advice might be more needed then than now. Delicatessen shops were few and far between, and certainly there were no cars in which one could run round in to pick up cooked meats, etc. for dinner when golf, croquet, bridge parties had kept one late. Perhaps "Mrs. Beeton" is hopelessly out of date, but never once has she let me down when seeking information, which the up-to-date cookery books seem to imagine one should know,
whether a born cook or not.
TAN
(Auckland).
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19440310.2.12.4
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 246, 10 March 1944, Page 7
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339MRS. BEETON New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 246, 10 March 1944, Page 7
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