224 pp; 120x190mm; paperback
ISBN 0907325882 £12.99

REVIEWS 
It would be wrong to say this was extensively covered in the British press. But it was the exquisitely chosen Christmas presentation of the writer Bea Wilson to Derek Cooper on the Christmas Day edition of the BBC’s The Food Programme. That showed taste I thought. 

Link to four sample recipes
 
 
 

It is full of sound sense. There is lots of discussion of the best way to plan a meal, serve a meal, devise recipes, equip a kitchen, light a dining-room, buy furniture at the outset of married life, and generally comport yourself at home. There is much thought about French and English cookery, without chauvinism or prejudice, and there are excellent recipes. Puddings and soups are particularly strong suits. These tend to address the basics, not the curlicues, of household cookery, and are attended with intelligent comments about getting things right at the outset. 'The late Lord Dudley truly said, "A good soup, a small turbot, a neck of venison, and an apricot tart, is a dinner fit for an emperor." Let, then, your dinner be based on this principle, for in proportion to its smallness ought to be its excellence both as to the quality of its materials and its cookery. Big dinner, honest opinion. 

This is a facsimile edition, although the impression has been enlarged beyond a true facsimile in order to make it easier to read. The most celebrated living authority on British culinary history, Alan Davidson, contributes an introduction to this first-rate overview of mid-Victorian dining as well as identifying the man behind Tabitha Tickletooth: the actor Charles Selby.