The Pedant In The Kitchen

In my early thirties, when the kitchen was slowly mutating from a place of resented necessity to one of tense pleasure, I had my first attempt at Vichy carrots.

Why should a word in a recipe be less important than a word in a novel? One can lead to physical indigestion, the other to mental.

In 1923, Joseph Conrad’s wife, Jessie, published A Handbook of Cookery for a Small House. Her husband’s preface begins like this:
Of all the books produced since the remote ages by human talents and industry those only that treat of cooking are, from a moral point of view, above suspicion. The intention of every other piece of prose may be discussed and even mistrusted, but the purpose of a cookery book is one and unmistakable. Its object can conceivably be no other than to increase the happiness of mankind.