From the churchyard (well, actually, the Additional Burial Ground this time)

10/11/2021

Do you like cookery books? Before Mrs Beaton, at one time the most famous of cookery writers, there was Eliza Acton. In 1845 she produced “Modern Cookery for Private Families”, which is still in print. Delia Smith called her the “best writer of recipes in the English language”. She was the first to set down a recipe for Brussel Sprouts* and a popular one for Christmas Pudding** featured.

The book was aimed at middle class families – there’s much less of Isabella Beaton’s extravagance here although it is said that Mrs Beaton plagiarised her work.

Born in Sussex in 1799 (the family moved to Ipswich in 1800} Eliza was a teacher for a while, going to France in 1823. Returning to London in 1826 she had some poems published (at her own expense) but a few years later her publisher reportedly rejected further poems and suggested she write a cookery book instead. We might think this an impossibly patronising and sexist suggestion today, but it took seed and she spent the next 10 years working on ‘Modern Cookery’. in her preface she writes that her “first and best attention has been bestowed on … what are usually termed plain English dishes” for her recipes.

She didn’t stop at “Modern Cookery”. There was “the English Bread Book”, “The Elegant Economist” The Victorian Kitchen Book of Jams and Jellies”, as well as books of poems.

One of her poems

Come to my grave when I am gone,
And bend a moment there alone;
It will not cost thee much of pain
To trample on my heart again–
Or, if it would, for ever stay
Far distant from my mouldering clay:
I would not wound thy breast to prove
E’en its most deep, ‘remorse of love.’
The grave should be a shrine of peace
Where all unkindly feelings cease;–
Though thou wilt calmly gaze on mine
I would not live the hour to see,
Which doom’d my glance to rest on thine:–
That moment’s bitter agony
Would bid the very life-blood start
Back, and congeal around my heart!

If you do go to her grave you’ll find it under the Yew tree in the ABG, not far from the compost bins. Like many graves the stone is crumbling and the inscription illegible but it once read:

“Sacred to the memory of Elize Acton, formerly of Ipswich, who died at Hampstead, February 13^th 1859”

There is a proposal to improve on this and note that she was a “Cook, Writer and Poet”. Watch this space!

*Cooking Brussels Sprouts

Boil in salty water and serve on buttered bread with melted butter on the side

**Eliza Acton Christmas Pudding