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.

Cooking is about making do with what you’ve got – equipment, ingredients, level of competence.

So it didn’t matter in the end? No, not really. Then why all this fuss? Because, well, that’s what cooking’s about, isn’t it? It’s practically a dictionary definition. Cooking is the transformation of uncertainty (the recipe) into certainty (the dish) via fuss.

I also threw in a mild rant along the following lines: theoretically I know that all recipes are approximations, that the creative cook will each time make adjustments according to the quality and availability of ingredients, that nothing is set in stone (except wine vinegar mixed with hot molten sugar), and so on and so on. I just don’t want to be confronted with the reality of this in mid-cook.

How many cookbooks do you have?
(a) Not enough
(b) Just the right number
(c) Too many?
If you answered (b) you are disqualified for lying or complacency or not being interested in food or (scariest of all) having worked out everything perfectly. You score points for (a) and also for (c), but to score maximum points you need to have answered (a) and (c) in equal measure. (a) because there is always something new to be learned, someone coming along to make it all clearer, easier, more foolproof, more authentic; (c) because of the regular mistakes made when applying (a).

My wrath is also frequently turned against the cookbooks on which I rely so heavily. Still, this is one area where pedantry is both understandable and important: and the self-taught, anxious, page-scowling domestic cook is about as pedantic as you can get. But then, why should a cookbook be less precise than a manual of surgery? (Always assuming, as one nervously does, that manuals of surgery are indeed pre­cise. Perhaps some of them sound just like cookbooks: ‘Sling a gout of anaesthetic down the tube, hack a chunk off the patient, watch the blood drizzle, have a beer with your mates, sew up the cavity. . .’) 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.

now we roast them in a slow oven, no more than gas mark 1 or 2, and little blood escapes

You take six tomatoes, halve them, melt a lump of butter, put the toma­toes in a frying pan cut side down, prick their rounded sides, turn again (to let the juices run out), turn back up at once, add 3 fl oz double cream, mix, let it all bubble, serve.