Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management
{{short description|1861 book by Isabella Beeton}}
{{good article}}
{{Use British English|date=September 2015}}
{{Infobox book
| name = Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management
| image = File:Title page of 'Household Management' Wellcome L0042710.jpg
| image_size =
| caption = Title page: the first edition did not use the "Mrs." of later editions.
| author = Isabella Beeton
| illustrator =
| country =
| language = English
| subject = Cookery
| genre = Manual
| publisher = S. O. Beeton Publishing
| pub_date = 1861
| pages =|wikisource=Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management
}}
Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, also published as Mrs. Beeton's Cookery Book, is an extensive guide to running a household in Victorian Britain, edited by Isabella Beeton and first published as a book in 1861. Previously published in parts, it initially and briefly bore the title Beeton's Book of Household Management, as one of the series of guidebooks published by her husband, Samuel Beeton. The recipes were highly structured, in contrast to those in earlier cookbooks. It was illustrated with many monochrome and colour plates.
Although Mrs. Beeton died in 1865, the book continued to be a best-seller. The first editions after her death contained an obituary notice, but later editions did not, allowing readers to imagine that every word was written by an experienced Mrs. Beeton personally.
Many of the recipes were copied from the most successful cookery books of the day, including Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery for Private Families (first published in 1845), Elizabeth Raffald's The Experienced English Housekeeper (originally published in 1769), Marie-Antoine Carême's Le Pâtissier royal Parisien (1815), Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747), Maria Eliza Rundell's A New System of Domestic Cookery (1806), and the works of Charles Elmé Francatelli (1805–1876). This practice of Mrs. Beeton's has in modern times repeatedly been described as plagiarism.
The book expanded steadily in length until by 1907 it reached 74 chapters and over 2,000 pages. Nearly two million copies were sold by 1868, and {{as of|2016|lc=on}} it remains in print. Between 1875 and 1914 it was probably the most often-consulted cookery book. Mrs. Beeton has been compared on the strength of the book with modern "domestic goddesses" like Nigella Lawson and Delia Smith.
History
File:The book of household management by Mrs Beeton Wellcome L0045062.jpg
The author, Isabella Beeton, was 21 years old when she started working on the book. It was initially serialised in 24 monthly instalments, in her husband Samuel Orchart Beeton's publication The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine; the first instalment appeared in 1859.{{cite news | first=Polly | last=Russell | title=Mrs Beeton, the first domestic goddess | date=2010-12-03 | url=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/be9d91a6-fcd8-11df-ae2d-00144feab49a.html | work=Financial Times | access-date=2013-09-10 | archive-date=2015-12-08 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151208154047/http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/be9d91a6-fcd8-11df-ae2d-00144feab49a.html | url-status=live }} On 1 October 1861, the instalments were collected into one volume with the title The Book of Household Management, comprising information for the Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook, Kitchen-Maid, Butler, Footman, Coachman, Valet, Upper and Under House-Maids, Lady's-Maid, Maid-of-all-Work, Laundry-Maid, Nurse and Nurse-Maid, Monthly Wet and Sick Nurses, etc. etc.{{snds}}also Sanitary, Medical, & Legal Memoranda: with a History of the Origin, Properties, and Uses of all Things Connected with Home Life and Comfort.
In its preface she wrote:
{{quote|I must frankly own, that if I had known, beforehand, that this book would have cost me the labour which it has, I should never have been courageous enough to commence it. What moved me, in the first instance, to attempt a work like this, was the discomfort and suffering which I had seen brought upon men and women by household mismanagement. I have always thought that there is no more fruitful source of family discontent than a housewife's badly-cooked dinners and untidy ways.}}
Beeton's half-sister, Lucy Smiles, was later asked by her son about her memories of the book's development, for the centenary of Beeton's birth, 1936. She recalled:
{{quote|Different people gave their recipes for the book. That for Baroness pudding (a suet pudding with a plethora of raisins) was given by the Baroness de Tessier, who lived at Epsom. No recipe went into the book without a successful trial, and the home at Pinner was the scene of many experiments and some failures. I remember Isabella coming out of the kitchen one day, 'This won't do at all,' she said, and gave me the cake that had turned out like a biscuit. I thought it very good. It had currants in it.{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article91803361 |title=The Home Page |newspaper=The Advocate |location=Burnie, Tasmania |date=20 June 1936 |access-date=10 September 2013 |page=12 Edition: Daily |publisher=National Library of Australia}}}}
Previously published as a part-work, it was first published as a book in 1861 by S. O. Beeton Publishing, 161 Bouverie Street, London, a firm founded by Samuel Beeton.{{cite book |chapter-url=http://www.ulib.niu.edu/badndp/beeton_samuel.html |title=The House of Beadle & Adams and its Dime and Nickel Novels: The Story of a Vanished Literature |first=Albert |last=Johannsen |volume=II |pages=32–33 |chapter=Beeton, Samuel Orchart. |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press |year=1950 |access-date=2016-03-01 |archive-date=2021-01-03 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210103171617/https://www.ulib.niu.edu/badndp/beeton_samuel.html |url-status=live }}
The book was an immediate best-seller, selling 60,000 copies in its first year{{cite web|title=Mrs Beeton (1836–1865)|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/beeton_mrs.shtml|publisher=BBC|access-date=15 May 2018|date=2014|archive-date=3 January 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210103171612/https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/beeton_mrs.shtml|url-status=live}}{{cite web |last1=Stark |first1=Monica |title=Domesticity for Victorian Dummies |url=http://www.januarymagazine.com/cookbook/mrsbeeton.html |work=January Magazine |access-date=8 April 2015 |date=July 2001 |archive-date=3 January 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210103171610/http://www.januarymagazine.com/cookbook/mrsbeeton.html |url-status=live }} and totalling nearly two million by 1868. In 2010 a copy of the first edition of Household Management in "top condition" was stated to be worth more than £1,000.{{cite web | url=http://www.millersantiquesguide.com/articles/cookerybooks/ | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131227050557/http://www.millersantiquesguide.com/articles/cookerybooks/ | url-status=usurped | archive-date=December 27, 2013 | title=Cookery Books | access-date=2013-09-10 | last=Miller | first=Judith | date=2010-03-21 | work=Millers' Antiques Guide}} In 1863 a revised edition was issued.{{cite web |title=Beeton, Mrs Isabella Mary 14 March 1836–6 February 1865 |url=http://householdbooks.ucdavis.edu/authors/1284 |publisher=UC Davis Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science |access-date=1 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160310100031/http://householdbooks.ucdavis.edu/authors/1284 |archive-date=10 March 2016 |url-status=dead }}
In 1866, a year after Isabella's death, Samuel was in debt due to the collapse of Overend and Gurney, a London discount house to which he owed money. To save himself from bankruptcy he sold the copyright to all of his publications for a little over £19,000.{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article72811375 |title=Miscellaneous |newspaper=The South Australian Advertiser |location=Adelaide |date=18 March 1867 |access-date=10 September 2013 |page=4 |publisher=National Library of Australia}} Of that, the rights to Household Management were sold to publishers Ward, Lock and Tyler for £3,250.{{cite news| title=How successful was Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management?| url=http://www.sixservants.com/articles-on-books/how-successful-was-mrs-beetons-book.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100618124419/http://www.sixservants.com/articles-on-books/how-successful-was-mrs-beetons-book.html |archive-date=18 June 2010 |newspaper=Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper |date=23 December 1866 |issue=1257}} The early editions included an obituary notice for Beeton, but the publishers insisted it be removed "allowing readers to imagine{{snds}}perhaps even as late as 1915{{snds}}that some mob-capped matriarch was out there still keeping an eye on them".{{cite news | first=Julian | last=Barnes | title=Mrs Beeton to the rescue | url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/apr/05/julianbarnes.houseandgarden | work=The Guardian | date=5 April 2003 | access-date=1 March 2016 | archive-date=19 November 2015 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151119092338/http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/apr/05/julianbarnes.houseandgarden | url-status=live }}
Revisions to Household Management by its publisher have continued to the present day. The effort has kept the Beeton name in the public eye for over 125 years, although current editions are far removed from those published in Mrs. Beeton's lifetime. By 1906 the book had 2,056 pages, "exclusive of advertising", with 3,931 recipes and was "half as large again" as the previous edition.{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article38814956 |title=The Cookery Book |newspaper=Western Mail |location=Perth |date=25 August 1906 |access-date=10 September 2013 |page=38 |publisher=National Library of Australia |archive-date=3 January 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210103171617/https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/38814956 |url-status=live }}
Book
=== Contents ===
The following description refers to the 1907 edition; the book was greatly extended in the decades since Mrs. Beeton's death (in 1865) to 74 chapters and over 2000 pages;Beeton, 1907 edition. the first edition had 44 chapters.Beeton, 1861 edition.
The book begins with general chapters on the duties of the "mistress", the housekeeper, and the cook. There follow chapters on the kitchen itself, "marketing" (choosing good-quality produce at the market), and an introduction to cookery (Chapter 6).Beeton, 1907. Chapters 1 to 6 Together, these take up over 100 pages. Chapters seven to 38 (roughly 1000 pages) cover English cooking, with recipes for soups, gravies, fish, meat (principally veal, beef, mutton and lamb, and pork), poultry, game, preserves, vegetables, pastries, puddings, sweets, jams, pickles, and savouries.Beeton, 1907. Chapters 7 to 38 Chapter 39 describes the "art of carving at table", supported by eleven illustrations.Beeton, 1907. Chapter 39 Chapters 40 to 50 (some 200 pages) give instructions for dairy products, vegetarian and invalid (sick person) cookery, making bread, biscuits and cakes, and beverages.Beeton, 1907. Chapters 40 to 50 Chapters 51 to 59 describe cooking in various international styles including French, German, Spanish, Jewish, Australian, South African, Indian, American, and Canadian cookery.Beeton, 1907. Chapters 51 to 59 Chapters 60 to 68 guide on matters from trussing poultry to the definitions of culinary terms, arranging meals, decorating the table, making menus, and the duties of domestic servants.Beeton, 1907. Chapters 60 to 68 Chapters 69 to 73 describe "household recipes" and medical preparations.Beeton, 1907. Chapters 69 to 73 The final chapter, 74, offers "legal memoranda".Beeton, 1907. Chapter 74
There is a detailed index. The edition includes advertisements for products such as "Lemco" beef extract and "Cadbury's Cocoa".
=== Approach ===
File:Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management (10).jpg, grayling, John Dory, mackerel, cod, whiting, salmon, herring, plaice, flounder, gurnet, crayfish]]
The preface sets out the book's goal of providing "men" with such well-cooked food at home that it may compete with what they could eat "at their clubs, well-ordered taverns, and dining-houses". Mrs. Beeton claims that:
{{quote|I have attempted to give, under the chapters devoted to cookery, an intelligible arrangement to every recipe, a list of the ingredients, a plain statement of the mode of preparing each dish, and a careful estimate of its cost, the number of people for whom it is sufficient, and the time when it is seasonableBeeton. Preface.}}
She explains that she was thus attempting to make the basics of cookery "intelligible" to any "housewife".
The first chapter sets the tone of the book with a quotation from the Book of Proverbs, and in early editions cites also The Vicar of Wakefield with:Beeton. "The Mistress".
{{quote|The modest virgin, the prudent wife, and the careful matron, are much more serviceable in life than petticoated philosophers, blustering heroines, or virago queens. She who makes her husband and her children happy, who reclaims the one from vice and trains up the other to virtue{{cite book |last1=Goldsmith |first1=Oliver |author-link1=Oliver Goldsmith |title=The Vicar of Wakefield |date=1766 |publisher=R. Collins|title-link=The Vicar of Wakefield }}}}
The book thus advocates early rising, cleanliness, frugality, good temper, and the wisdom of interviewing servants rather than relying on written references.
Cookery is introduced with words about "the progress of mankind from barbarism to civilization", with a mention of man "in his primitive state, [living] upon roots and the fruits of the earth", rising to become in turn "a hunter and a fisher"; then a "herdsman" and finally "the comfortable condition of a farmer." It is granted that "the fruits of the earth, the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, and the fish of the sea, are still the only food of mankind", but that:Beeton. "Cookery".
{{quote|[T]hese are so prepared, improved, and dressed by skill and ingenuity, that they are the means of immeasurably extending the boundaries of human enjoyments.}}
The text then swiftly passes to a description of simple measures like a table-spoonful, and the duties of servants.
The whole rest of the book is taken up with instructions for cooking, with an introduction in each chapter to the type of food it describes. The first of these, on soups, begins "Lean, juicy beef, mutton, and veal form the basis of all good soups; therefore it is advisable to procure those pieces which afford the richest succulence, and such as are fresh-killed." The account of how to make soup consists of a single essay, divided into general advice and numbered steps for making any kind of (meat-based) soup. This is followed in early editions by a separate chapter of recipes for soups of different kinds.Beeton. "Stock and Soups".
Each recipe is structured into a title, a list of ingredients (with quantities, either natural{{snds}}as a number of eggs or vegetables, a number of slices of ham{{snds}}or measured in Imperial units{{snds}}ounces of salt, quarts of water. The actual instructions are headed "Mode", as "Cut up the veal, and put it with the bones and trimmings of poultry". A separate section gives the overall preparation time, and the average cost as, for example, "9d. per quart".{{efn|"d" means a penny, 1/240 of a pound sterling.}} Many recipes state in separate brief sections when a recipe is "seasonable and for how many persons it is "sufficient". Finally, a "note" gives any required advice, such as "When stronger stock is desired, double the quantity of veal, or put in an old fowl." This highly structured presentation was the book's main innovation.{{cite news |last=Carpenter |first=Julie |title=Mrs Beeton's recipe of shame |url=http://www.express.co.uk/expressyourself/284158/Mrs-Beeton-s-recipe-of-shame |access-date=1 March 2016 |agency=The Daily Express |date=17 November 2011}}
=== Oddities ===
{{Quote box
|quote =(The tomato's) flavour stimulates the appetite and is almost universally approved. The Tomato is a wholesome fruit, and digests easily. ... it has been found to contain a particular acid, a volatile oil, a brown, very fragrant extracto-resinous matter, a vegeto-mineral matter, muco-saccharine, some salts, and, in all probability, an alkaloid. The whole plant has a disagreeable odour, and its juice, subjected to the action of the fire, emits a vapour so powerful as to cause vertigo and vomiting.
|source=Book of Household Management sections 1158–1159. The conflicting opinions on the tomato occurring on the same page have been noted as seemingly careless editing.{{cite book|last=Bryson|first=Bill|title=At home: a short history of private life|date=2011|publisher=Anchor Books|location=New York|isbn=978-0-7679-1939-5|edition=1st Anchor Books|title-link=At home : a short history of private life}}
|width =40%
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Despite professing to be a guide of reliable information about every aspect of running a house for the aspirant middle classes, the original edition devotes 23 pages to household management, then discusses cooking for almost all of the other 900. Even with the emphasis on food, some of her cooking advice is so odd as to suggest that she had little experience preparing meals. For example, the book recommends boiling pasta for an hour and forty-five minutes. Like many other British people of her social class and generation, Mrs. Beeton adopted a distaste for unfamiliar foods, saying that mangoes tasted like turpentine, lobsters were indigestible, garlic was offensive, potatoes were "suspicious; a great many are narcotic, and many are deleterious", cheese could only be consumed by sedentary people, and tomatoes were either good or bad for a range of reasons.
Unlike earlier cookbook authors, such as Hannah Glasse, the book offered an "emphasis on thrift and economy". It also discarded the style of previous writers who employed "daunting paragraph[s] of text with ingredients and method jumbled up together" for what is a recognisably modern "user-friendly formula listing ingredients, method, timings and even the estimated cost of each recipe".{{cite news |first=Helen |last=Stringer |title=Mrs. Beeton Saved My Life |date=19 January 2000 |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-jan-19-fo-55274-story.html |work=Los Angeles Times |access-date=10 September 2013 |archive-date=29 December 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131229025109/http://articles.latimes.com/2000/jan/19/food/fo-55274 |url-status=live}}
= Plagiarism =
In a critical letter, Mrs. Beeton's acquaintance Mrs. Henrietta Mary Pourtois English advised her that "Cookery is a Science that is only learnt by Long Experience{{efn|Emphasis in the original.}} and years of study which of course you have not had. Therefore my advice would be to compile a book from recipes from a Variety of the Best Books published on Cookery and Heaven knows there is a great variety for you to choose from."{{cite book |last=Spain |first=Nancy |author-link=Nancy Spain |title=Mrs Beeton and her Husband |url=https://archive.org/details/mrsbeetonherhusb00spai |url-access=registration |year=1948 |publisher=Collins |oclc=3178766 |page=[https://archive.org/details/mrsbeetonherhusb00spai/page/115 115]}} The recipes were largely copied from the most successful cookery books of the day, the copying in several cases unacknowledged in the text. The "variety" included Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery for Private Families{{cite book |last=Hardy |first=Sheila |title=The Real Mrs. Beeton: The Story of Eliza Acton |url=https://archive.org/details/realmrsbeetonsto0000hard |url-access=registration |year=2011 |publisher=History Press |isbn=978-0-7524-6680-4 |page=[https://archive.org/details/realmrsbeetonsto0000hard/page/203 203]}} and her The English Bread–Book,{{efn|Acton is acknowledged with "The following observations are extracted from a valuable work on Bread-making,† and will be found very useful to our readers ... [Footnote: †'The English Bread–Book.' By Eliza Acton. London: Longman.]".{{cite web |url=http://www.mrsbeeton.com/34-chapter34.html |title=Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, Chapter 34: General Observations On Bread, Biscuits, and Cakes, section 1692 |website=Mrsbeeton.com |date=1861 |author=Mrs Beeton |access-date=2016-03-13 |archive-date=2021-01-03 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210103171613/http://www.mrsbeeton.com/34-chapter34.html |url-status=live }}}} Elizabeth Raffald's The Experienced English Housekeeper, Marie-Antoine Carême's Le Pâtissier royal Parisien,{{cite journal |last1=Broomfield |first1=Andrea |title=Rushing Dinner to the Table: The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine and Industrialization's Effects on Middle-Class Food and Cooking, 1852–1860 |journal=Victorian Periodicals Review |date=Summer 2008 |volume=41 |issue=2 |pages=101–23 |jstor=20084239|doi=10.1353/vpr.0.0032 |s2cid=161900658 }} Louis Eustache Ude's The French Cook,{{efn|Ude is however acknowledged in chapters 6, 17, 21, 23 and 27.}} Alexis Soyer's The Modern Housewife or, Ménagère and The Pantropheon, Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, Maria Eliza Rundell's A New System of Domestic Cookery, and the works of Charles Elmé Francatelli.{{cite book |last=Hughes |first=Kathryn |author-link=Kathryn Hughes |title=The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=p5NvuLMB3tYC&pg=PP1 |year=2006 |publisher=HarperCollins |isbn=978-0-7524-6122-9 |pages=198–201, 206–10}}{{cite web|last1=Hughes |first1=Kathryn |author-link1=Kathryn Hughes |url=http://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/mrs-beeton-and-the-art-of-household-management |title=Mrs Beeton and the art of household management |publisher=The British Library |access-date=13 March 2016 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160106044610/http://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/mrs-beeton-and-the-art-of-household-management |archive-date=6 January 2016 }} Published under Creative Commons Attribution Licence{{cite news|last=Brown |first=Mark |title=Mrs Beeton couldn't cook but she could copy, reveals historian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jun/02/guardianhayfestival2006.books |newspaper=The Guardian |date=2 June 2006 |archive-date=8 December 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151208042814/http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jun/02/guardianhayfestival2006.books |url-status=dead }}
In modern times Mrs. Beeton's practice has been criticised as plagiarism; Beeton's modern biographer Kathryn Hughes talks of her "lifting" and "brazenly copying" recipes from others, and says that this was "the way that cookery books had been put together from time immemorial ...".{{cite web |url=http://gherkinstomatoes.com/2010/08/23/mrs-beeton-i-presume/ |title=Ladies of the Pen and the Cookpot: Isabella Beeton (Part I) – Cynthia D. Bertelsen's Gherkins & Tomatoes |newspaper=Gherkinstomatoes.com |date=23 August 2010 |last=Bertelsen |first=Cynthia D. |access-date=13 March 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160313201431/http://gherkinstomatoes.com/2010/08/23/mrs-beeton-i-presume/ |archive-date=13 March 2016 |url-status=dead }} The New York Times said, "Isabella [Beeton] plagiarised only the best".{{cite news |last1=Shapiro |first1=Laura |title='The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton,' by Kathryn Hughes: Domestic Goddess |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/books/review/28shapiro.html?_r=0 |newspaper=New York Times |date=28 May 2006 |access-date=8 April 2015 |archive-date=3 January 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210103171613/https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/books/review/28shapiro.html?_r=0 |url-status=live }} This led to the comment that "Mrs Beeton couldn't cook but she could copy".{{cite news |last=Brown |first=Mark |title=Mrs Beeton couldn't cook but she could copy, reveals historian |date=2006-06-02 |url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jun/02/guardianhayfestival2006.books |work=The Guardian |access-date=2013-09-10 |archive-date=2015-12-08 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151208042814/http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/jun/02/guardianhayfestival2006.books |url-status=live }} Hughes recounts that Beeton's "first recipe for Victoria sponge was so inept that she left out the eggs" and that her work was "brazenly copied ... almost word for word, from books as far back as the Restoration". The influential 20th-century food writer Elizabeth David dismissed her as "a plagiarist"{{cite news |last=Leith |first=Prue |author-link=Prue Leith |title=The original domestic goddess |date=14 August 2005 | url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/14/gender.uk |newspaper=The Guardian |access-date=10 September 2013 |archive-date=3 January 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210103171613/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/14/gender.uk |url-status=live}} and later wrote: "I wonder if I would have ever learned to cook at all if I had been given a routine Mrs. Beeton to learn from".{{cite book |last=Cooper |first=Artemis |author-link=Artemis Cooper |year=2000| title=Writing at the Kitchen Table – The Authorized Biography of Elizabeth David |publisher=Michael Joseph |isbn=0-7181-4224-1 |page=45}}
= Illustrations =
The 1907 edition runs to some 30 full-page colour plates and over 100 full-page illustrations in monochrome. These include photographs, such as of the housekeeper standing with hands behind her back in her kitchen, facing the first page of Chapter two, "The Housekeeper". An idea of the amount of detail may be gained from the fact that there are eleven illustrations of types of fish, such as "steamed sole" and "soused mackerel", and another of "fish entrées".Beeton, 1907. Illustrations
One full-page colour plate illustrated a range of puddings, showing jelly, raspberry cream, a centre dish piled high with fruits, a trifle, and an ornamental flowerpot containing a strawberry plant.
Another full-page colour plate showed a variety of fruits including apricots, white and black cherries, white, red, and black currants, a melon, strawberries, and varieties of plums, all piled high on circular dishes or fruit stands.
File:Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management (55).jpg|Kitchen with a housekeeper, 1907
File:Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management (93).jpg|Kitchen equipment, 1907
File:Puddingsbhm.jpg|Full-page colour plate of puddings
File:Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management (32).jpg|Full-page colour plate of fruits
File:StateLibQld 2 191859 Elaborate cuts of roast meat presented on silver platters, 1901.jpg|Roast meats, 1901
Influence and legacy
= Contemporary =
The preface of Wilhelmina Rawson's Queensland Cookery and Poultry Book (1878), published in Australia, observes that: "Mrs. Lance Rawson's Cookery Book ... is written entirely for the Colonies, and for the middle classes, and for those people who cannot afford to buy a Mrs. Beeton or a Warne, but who can afford the three shillings for this."{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article19923225 |title=The Queensland Cookery and Poultry Book.*. |newspaper=The Queenslander |location=Brisbane |date=5 March 1887 |access-date=17 March 2014 |page=391 |publisher=National Library of Australia}}{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article52062993 |title=Advertising. |newspaper=The Morning Bulletin |location=Rockhampton, Qld. |date=30 December 1886 |access-date=17 March 2014 |page=3 |publisher=National Library of Australia |archive-date=3 January 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210103171730/https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/52062993 |url-status=live }}
The Oxford English Dictionary recognised that, by the 1890s, Beeton's name "was adopted as a term for an authority on all things domestic and culinary".{{cite web | url=http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/08/the-language-of-cooking-from-forme-of-cury-to-pukka-tucker/ | title=The language of cooking: from 'Forme of Cury' to 'Pukka Tucker' | access-date=2013-09-10 | last=Etty | first=Claire | work=Oxford Dictionaries | archive-date=2016-03-04 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304112911/http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/08/the-language-of-cooking-from-forme-of-cury-to-pukka-tucker/ | url-status=dead }} The Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science observed that "it was probably found in more homes than any other cookery book, and [was probably] the most often consulted, in the years 1875 to 1914".
A chapter of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus (1899) is entitled, "Concerning Mrs. Beeton"; a character declares: "Mrs. Beeton must have been the finest housekeeper in the world, therefore Mr. Beeton must have been the happiest and most comfortable man".Wikisource:A Duet, with an Occasional Chorus/Chapter XI{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article71539192 |title=BOOKS, PUBLICATIONS, ETC. |newspaper=Australian Town and Country Journal |location=NSW |date=25 July 1906 |access-date=10 September 2013 |page=34 |publisher=National Library of Australia}}
= Modern =
Mrs. Beeton has been described as "the grandmother of modern domestic goddesses", like Nigella Lawson and Delia Smith, who saw, as Beeton did, the need to provide reassuring advice on culinary matters for the British middle classes. However, while Lawson and Smith "insist that cooking can be easy, fun and uncomplicated", Beeton "acknowledges the labour and skill required to cook well".
The book is referenced repeatedly in The Wind in the Willows (TV series) episode "The Masterchef". Mr. Toad attempts to make an apricot souffle, but the wind blows the pages to a "mustard and linseed poultice" remedy from the medical preparations section midway through. He fails to notice. Luckily, the linseed oil ignites in the oven and destroys the dish before he can serve it to his friends.
The food writer and chef Gerard Baker tested and revised 220 of Beeton's recipes, and published the result as Mrs. Beeton: How To Cook (2011).{{cite news |last=Sitwell |first=William |title=What Mrs. Beeton did to us |date=2012-04-18 |url=http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/books/2012/04/what-mrs-beeton-did-to-us/ |work=The Spectator |access-date=2013-09-10 |archive-date=2013-12-29 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131229005153/http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/books/2012/04/what-mrs-beeton-did-to-us/ |url-status=live}}
For the book's 150th anniversary in 2011, the Royal Society of Chemistry planned to feature one of Beeton's recipes. Due to the financial climate at the time in wake of the Great Recession, the Society selected Beeton's toast sandwich, a dish that Beeton included to cater to the less well-off.{{cite web |title=RSC press release: Mrs. Beeton's toast sandwich |url=http://www.rsc.org/AboutUs/News/PressReleases/2011/MrsBeeton.asp |website=www.rsc.org|date=15 November 2011 |access-date=2015-11-09 |archive-date=2015-10-16 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151016134635/http://www.rsc.org/AboutUs/News/PressReleases/2011/MrsBeeton.asp |url-status=live}}
In 2012, the food economist for the British television period drama Downton Abbey described Beeton's book as an "important guide" for the food served in the series.{{cite news |last=Krystal |first=Becky |title=On 'Downton Abbey,' aspic matters |date=2012-12-31 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/on-downton-abbey-aspic-matters/2012/12/28/674a4aea-4acc-11e2-9a42-d1ce6d0ed278_story.html |newspaper=The Washington Post |access-date=2013-09-10 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131029222754/http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-12-31/lifestyle/36103319_1_lady-carnarvon-puddings-food |archive-date=2013-10-29 }}
== Editions ==
The book has appeared in many editions, including:{{cite book |title=Book of Household management |publisher=WorldCat |oclc=78724054 }}
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Notes
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References
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External links
{{Commons category|Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management}}
- The Book of Household Management, digital copy of 1st edition, 1861.
{{gutenberg|no=10136|name=The Book of Household Management}}
- [http://www.exclassics.com/beeton/beetintr.htm Online version of Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management with original illustrations (various formats)]
- {{librivox book|title=The Book of Household Management| author=Isabella Beeton}}
{{English cuisine}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mrs Beeton's Book Of Household Management}}
Category:1861 non-fiction books
Category:Books involved in plagiarism controversies