Drawing on the experience she gained while 'constantly employed by fashionable and noble families', Eliza Smith, writing a hundred years before Mrs Beeton, compiled a collection of more than 600 recipes which had met with 'the general ...

However, armed with this volume, as readable and relevant today as any contemporary manual, 'let there be clear water, clear weather and clear scope for observation' and any enthusiast may pit his or her 'superior intelligence against the ...