Today's Featured Book:
Miss Eliza's English Kitchen:
A Novel of Victorian Cookery and Friendship
by Annabel Abbs
Genre: Historical Fiction
Published: November 16, 2021
Page Count: 400 pages
Summary:
In Victorian England, 1835, London is awash with thrilling new ingredients, from rare spices to exotic fruits. But no one knows how to use them. When Eliza Acton is told by her publisher to write a cookery book instead of the poetry she loves, she refuses—until her bankrupt father is forced to flee the country. As a woman, Eliza has few options. Although she’s never set foot in a kitchen, she begins collecting recipes and teaching herself to cook. Much to her surprise she discovers a talent – and a passion – for the culinary arts.
Eliza hires young, destitute Ann Kirby to assist her. As they cook together, Ann learns about poetry, love and ambition. The two develop a radical female friendship, breaking the boundaries of class while creating new ways of writing recipes. But when Ann discovers a secret in Eliza’s past, and finds a voice of her own, their friendship starts to fray.
Based on the true story of the first modern cookery writer, Miss Eliza’s English Kitchen is a spellbinding work of culinary fiction about friendship, the struggle for independence, and the transcendent pleasures and solace of food.
Midday in the City of London, the carts and carriages rattling over the cobbles, the screech of costermongers, the jostle of barrows and handcarts, the thin-ribbed boys who are shirtless and swooping like starved birds to shovel every steaming clod of dung. It is the hottest day of the year—or so it feels to me, burning and corseted inside my best silk dress. On Paternoster Row the heat radiates from every brick, every brass bellpull, every iron railing. Even the wooden scaffolding, which props up every half-built windowless property, is stubbornly lodged with heat and creaking with thirst.
It is the most important day of my life, so to calm my nerves that are all ajangle, I observe the scene and shape it into words: The crowds dripping along the side of the road where the taller buildings fling their shadows. The straining horses that are slick with sweat. The fans stitched from peacock feathers and fluttering from carriage windows. The wilting lash of the drivers’ whips. And the sun, like a vast golden orb in a dome of unbroken blue.
Abbs, Annabel. Miss Eliza's English Kitchen: A Novel of Victorian Cookery and Friendship, p. 1, Kindle Edition.
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“I made it myself this morning. I’ve been experimenting and this version includes a little crushed lavender.”
I don’t want her to think me rude, so I nod and whisper, “Yes, please, ma’am.” Just as Mrs. Thorpe told me.
She pours a tall glass. And then I realize she’s waiting for me to drink it. Mrs. Thorpe didn’t mention anything about drinks, so I’m unsure what to do.
“Drink!” Miss Acton commands.
I take a sip, and it’s like nothing I’ve ever tasted. Sweet and sour and sharp and blossomy all at once.
“What do you think?” she asks. I stare at her, forgetting that Mrs. Thorpe told me never to stare.
“Well, speak,” she says, but I don’t think she’s cross because there’s a little smile on her lips.
I don’t say that her question makes me tremble, that Mrs. Thorpe told me I must never have an opinion. And nor do I tell her that the lemonade tastes of something I can’t put into words, of Mam shredding lavender flowers and mixing them with the crushed leaves of verbena and lemon balm . . . Tears prick at the back of my eyes, and I reach for the table to steady myself.
“Are you unwell?” Miss Acton comes to my side and helps me into a low chair, where I sit, hot and ashamed.
“You need more lemonade,” she says, and pours another glass. Then she stoops beside me and holds the glass right by my face so I can see the pale cloudy liquid and smell the lemons and lavender all over again.
“Perhaps the heat has affected you, in that worsted dress.” She puts the glass on the floor and leaves the room.
And I know full well she’s gone to write a letter of complaint to Mrs. Thorpe, that I have done everything wrong—and shown myself to be puny and rude and a disgrace. No doubt my bad blood has shown itself.
I drink the lemonade, and it’s like coming from a gray dream and feeling the world lift and rise around me. Calming. So that when I hear her step in the hall, I jump up and stand very straight beside the sink. As if I’m ready for work.
“You’re better,” she declares.
“The l-lemonade, ma’am,” I stutter. I want to make amends by telling her how delicious it is but when I pause, Miss Acton leaps in. “It made you unwell? Oh, that is terrible!”
She frowns very severely and peers into the earthenware jug. “I think the lavender was a mistake. Perhaps cold milk and a dash of sherry would improve it . . .”
“No, ma’am,” I say, quite desperate now. “It is the most delicious thing I have ever tasted and brought back such memories I was quite overcome. I’m very sorry, ma’am. I’m normally strong as an ox, ma’am.”
Abbs, Annabel. Miss Eliza's English Kitchen: A Novel of Victorian Cookery and Friendship, pp. 55-57. Kindle Edition.
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Eliza Acton's father declares bankruptcy and the whole family is suffering. Eliza and her mother open up a boarding house and Eliza begins to make plans to write a cookery book. Ann Kirby, poor and without many options, comes to work with Eliza, first on her cooking and later collaborating with Eliza on her book.
Sometimes historical fiction irritates me with vocabulary that doesn't fit the times or with behavior that doesn't fit the times. This book felt well researched, with strong yet believable women characters. I enjoyed reading about all the foods Eliza and Ann prepared, and I loved watching the women cope with, and eventually thrive in, a world that would have preferred to put them on the sidelines.
I downloaded a copy of the women's cookbook, and I plan to prepare food from the cookbook sometime this month or next.
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