No one could be considered more important to the British cooking heritage than Isabella Beeton. Her books would have been given as wedding presents to new wives and I know that my mother and grandmother both had copies of Mrs Beeton on their bookshelves many years ago.
It appears that our Australian cousins are clamouring for original copies of either Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management or the later Mrs Beetons’s Every Day Cookery and Housekeeping Book.
Mrs Beeton died in 1865, yet her legacy lives on through countless reprints and Antique dealers report that Australia is where all these books are heading, being sold through independent stores and eBay Australia at prices higher than those in the UK.
It is difficult to know what the particular fascination is that Australians hold with Mrs Beeton over readers in the UK, but it isn't difficult to understand why anyone would choose to read Mrs Beeton.
Within her Household Management book, she clearly demonstrates that she understood the chemistry of food and the nutritional qualities. Mrs Beeton wrote about the meat albumen characteristics and the need to avoid boiling stock long before Heston was even born.
As we said already, Mrs Beeton did indeed die in 1865, but she will live forever immortalised in her books.
My copy is bound in a green cover unlike the copy illustrated here and was published by Ward, Lock and Bowden Limited (The company only carried that name through 1893-97 dating my copy in that timeframe). The book makes for a fascinating read and gives insight into prices of produce at the start of the 20th century (chickens costing between 10 and 15 pence in todays currency) and has recipes for long forgotten cuts of meat that are making a resurgence.
Sadly I am frightened to peruse the book too much as its age means that it is delicate and must be looked after carefully to preserve it.
Fortunately however, the book underwent a complete modern reprint in 1984 in both hardback and paperback form and these regularly make appearances via eBay and Amazon.
So that’s my plan … pick up a 1984 copy to enjoy reading today and to preserve my original copy and hold onto the antique copy as a piece of cultural history.