DINNERS for Beginners (Hamish Hamilton, 1934, reprinted Persephone Books, 2011) is a book that makes no appeal to your culinary expertise. “This is a book for people who know nothing about cooking,” write the authors, Rachel and Margaret Ryan. They list such people as: “young married people, single women living without servants, bachelors. . . It is for these people that the authors of this book have tried to write a cookery book that EXPLAINS EVERYTHING.”
Oh, the bliss of listening to the Ryans in their larder! On gelatine leaves: “ideally . . . freshly-boiled calves’ feet”; rennet: “keep a small bottle in stock if you like junket”; nutmegs at 1½d for two.
“Try leaving a sprig of dried rosemary in your tea-caddy; it will give an aromatic flavour to the tea.” “If you get tired of a pot of jam, see if it will not prove more winning as part of a sweet.”
Eschew “the kitchen that is all bits and ends of this and that: old fish dripping, dead parsley, a little mouldering jam at the bottom of a dish, a vast bin of damp flour, a few withered oranges, and, on the shelves, a regiment of veteran tins full of stores that are never used, and never will be.”
Not that the Ryans disavow tins. One impromptu meal is for Creamed fish on toast. “This involves making a good white sauce. First open your tin of fish (any fish will do), and strain the liquor into a vessel.” Then make the white sauce, using an ounce each of butter and flour, and a teacupful each of milk and fish liquor.
The sauce must be cooked for at least five or six minutes, “during which time it must be bubbling gently, and it must be constantly stirred. Less time in cooking will result in the flour being raw and tasting like wallpaper paste. Any cessation in the stirring will mean lumps and burns.”
Add the fish, and make some hot buttered toast, or serve the fish on very hot plates. “Other things beside fish can be creamed in this way, including mushrooms.”
Scrambled Eggs are “often so badly made that a reliable recipe may not be out of place. . . Do not add milk or breadcrumbs or any other substance to the eggs. Now stir, stir, stir, with a wooden spoon, until the egg is creamy and begins to set. . .
“Mistakes in making scrambled eggs are the use of too much butter in the pan, too long cooking of the eggs so that they become leathery, and the introduction of milk, water, bread and so on — which is fatal.”
Finally, on a seasonally penitential note, there is the authors’ original Special recipe:
For one man, one pint of locusts.
Place in the sun in open vessel.
Leave for three days.
Remove head, wings, and legs.
Pound well, and boil slowly in plenty of milk, stirring vigorously. Add salt (if available) to taste, and serve hot when you can wait no longer. NB: This dish is no good when the breeding season is well advanced, as the excitable locust is then little more than skin. Season to be determined by observation. This is a genuine East African dish.
I believe them, but I have not tried it.