Elfreda Pownall

Famous female cooks, a juicy salmon recipe from 1664 — and the only interesting thing about Mrs Beeton

In Cooking People, Sophie Waugh makes us laugh with her astute observations about five women chefs, while pondering a puzzle about Biblical swine

• From magazine issue: 07 December 2013

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  Elfreda Pownall

  Famous female cooks, a juicy salmon recipe from 1664 — and the only interesting thing about Mrs Beeton

  

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• Cooking People

  Sophia Waugh

  Quartet, pp. 320

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Alexander Larman

What happened to the Rishi Sunak I knew at school?

Though Waugh assesses her chosen cooks astutely and follows their recipes with gusto, the real joy of the book lies in her own quirky personality and her asides, which are sometimes inconsequential, sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. Her food-mad family, and particularly her mother, a brilliant cook, are constantly quoted.

Waugh describes Mrs Beeton, author of one of her mother’s only two cookery books, as ‘much-loved’, but one senses that she herself is not a fan. Beeton is a pedant and a bore. From a close reading of the 2,751 numbered paragraphs of Beeton’s book Waugh winkles out one original conundrum: Beeton asks ‘for what purpose the Jews kept droves of swine’ (as in the parable of the Prodigal Son) when they weren’t allowed to eat pork? Thank you, Sophia Waugh, for finding something interesting in Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management.