A Handbook of Cookery

The writer Joseph Conrad took food very seriously, and this 1923 cookbook by his wife Jessie puts his principles into practice. Conrad believed that 'Good cooking is a moral agent. By good cooking I mean the simple food of every-day life, not the more or less skilful concoction of idle feasts and rare dishes', and Jessie's cook book is a testament to the virtues and savours of the good, plain English cooking that the writer said had added to the sum of his daily happiness for many priceless years. It is particularly intended for the inhabitants of the little houses that Conrad called 'the arbiters of the nation's destiny.' Chapters include: The Treatment of Vegetables; Soups and Stocks; Beef; Mutton; Veal and Pork; Fish; Fowls and Game Birds; Vegetables and Salads; Pastries Sweets and Cakes. Tellingly, the wife of a man known for novels with an Eastern colonial setting includes only one recipe for curry, and even then says 'The cooking of rice is the principal part in preparing a dish of curry'.