Mrs Beeton
I’m a big fan of Marks and Spencer. In Watching the English, anthropologist Kate Fox describes how you can tell a person’s social class (yes, we have social class in England), by what they buy from M&S. Everyone shops there, it’s what they shop there for that counts.
Posh people: Food only
Upper middle class: Food and underwear
Middle class: Underwear and some clothes
Lower-middle class: Clothes only
Obviously it’s not an exact science, but it’s pretty accurate. I’m not telling where I fit, plus, they’ve changed a lot over the last few years so it’s less clear cut.
Anyway, I was there today (but what was I buying??), and saw that they have a selection of hardback books made up from extracts from Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management. If you don’t know who Mrs Beeton is, please go and read about her here on Wikipedia. Anyway, the book was published in 1861. It’s available for downloading here at Project Gutenberg, so it wouldn’t just be about having it, but about a nice set of books, with great classic recipes and tips on how to run a household. I looked at the Cakes and Baking one first - looked ok. Then I picked up the Household Tips one. And there they were, on the contents page, the words that made me put the books down and walk away:
Chapter 4: Microwave Cookery
Obviously a woman ahead of her time.
lmao.
India
23 Oct 2006 at 5:49 pm
Careful … we might get the impression that you’re posh, as cookbooks are closer to being food than to being clothing.
24 Oct 2006 at 6:58 am
So everytime you go are you going to feel the need to buy even a frozen dinner? candy bar? bread?
24 Oct 2006 at 9:06 am
Who knows? Maybe the Victorians did have microwave ovens. Only they probably called them something like Fuggins’ Patent AEthero-Fornacula, and they weighed half a ton and caused irreversible damage to their users’ DNA. Which might explain why Mrs. Beeton snuffed it at a fairly young age…
25 Oct 2006 at 10:58 pm