You can leave your fruit whole in chunks if you prefer or if you prefer a smother jam, blitz it with a hand held blender, careful not to splash yourself with boiling hot jam though!

You may be fortunate enough to catch a few shrimps in the rock pools in other parts of Britain’s coastline. Good supplies are caught in many parts of the British Isles, and the stalls piled high with these fish were welcome and familiar sights at the horse and amusement fairs of the past. So it’s ironic that the very first cookbook to feature colour photography was so prosaic in its goals and in its target audience. To describe her as prolific would be an understatement: she wrote 170 cookbooks, including a series of ‘500’ books, all of which featured 500 recipes on a chosen topic (bread and scones, jams, pickles and chutneys, electric mixers and blenders, and so on).

But they were no flash in the pan: Patten’s stepby-step, no-nonsense pragmatism won over countless readers.

This treatment will produce a smooth sauce , but one that becomes thinner in consistency, so allow it to simmer gently for a time so it will become a little thicker. The method of making potted foods is a simple one - the ingredients are pounded with butter and a clever choice of flavourings. It is strange to think that in the nineteenth century oysters were so inexpensive that they were regarded as a poor man’s dish, as described by Sam Weller in Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens. Either arrange neat portions, or small individual containers filled with the food, on individual plates with a suitable salad garnish.When the cheese is well pounded and the mixture has stood for a while, it is possible to cut this into neat slices. I love how the spine is battered and the pages are spotted with spilt ingredients from previous, decades old bakes. TO SERVE: Hot with knives and forks and salad, or make smaller so they can be heated with fingers, see Card 24. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. As a child I learnt to bake with the help of Marguerite’s 1960s ‘Cookery in Colour’ (in which most of the pages are in fact orange, and the book is undoubtedly the reason I measure everything in imperial instead of metric) and my absolute favourite recipe was, and still is, for rich scones.