Isabella Beeton
1836—1865
What moved me, in the first instance, to attempt a work like this, was the discomfort and suffering which I had seen brought upon men and women by household mismanagement. I have always thought that there is no more fruitful source of family discontent than a housewife’s badly-cooked dinners and untidy ways.
Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management was one of the most popular books in England the year it was published, probably because nothing like it had ever been issued before. Among many other things, the book told how many larks were needed for a Lark Pie (nine), how to tell the difference between an epileptic seizure and a fit brought on by drunkenness or opium poisoning, what to remember when “Going out with the carriage,” how to make curds and whey, how to cook a swan, provided three and half pages of “General Remarks on Eggs,” outlined the medicinal uses of asparagus, told how to conduct an agreeable conversation (“small disappointments, petty annoyances, and other every-day incidents, should never be mentioned to your friends”), gave a reminder of the “Extreme Timidity of the Hare,” instructed how to dust (using either “a brush made of long feathers, or a goose’s wing”), how to care for horses and stables, how to understand real estate law, what to use if you have no cream for your tea (“1 new-laid egg”), what to do if you swallow arsenic, how to write a will, what time your cook should rise in the morning, the history of chocolate … The list is endless. Or rather, the list is 1,112 pages and 2,751 items long.
The book provided the answers to any question that might ever be asked about running a home and family. That may not sound like exciting material for a best-seller, but many readers were convinced that having a copy of Mrs. Beeton’s book would guarantee a peaceful marriage and a contented life. One of the reasons for its success was that it was the first time that anyone had written down cooking recipes in the sensible format that is still used today, or collected so much useful information in one place.
Isabella Mayson—or Bella, as she liked to be called—had married Samuel Beeton when she was twenty years old, and began writing the book a year later. How did such a young woman have the experience to create Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management? Well, she has been accused of stealing many of the recipes in the book from more experienced chefs. But she also had lots of practice growing up—she was the eldest of twenty-one brothers and sisters!
Bella Mayson’s father died when she was four years old and big sister to three younger siblings. Bella’s mother, Elizabeth, knew that her only chance at making a home for her children was finding someone else to marry. She wrote to an old friend, Henry Dorling, whose own wife had recently died, leaving four children in his care. Elizabeth needed a man with a steady job. Henry needed a woman to look after his motherless brood. It was the perfect match for each of them, apart from the question of where they would settle. Both Henry’s house and Elizabeth’s home on Milk Street were deemed too small for the double-sized family, which also included Elizabeth’s mother, called Granny Jerram.
The solution was unique.
Henry worked as Clerk of the Course at the Epsom racetrack, a job that carried much prestige and responsibility. He was in charge of organizing the horse races at this fashionable course, from scheduling and track conditions to the intake of money. Instead of buying a regular house, Henry moved everyone into the splendid new Grand Stand at the racetrack, where “there was an immense, pillared hall, a great stone staircase, a thirty-yard-long saloon, four refreshment rooms, and a warren of committee and retiring rooms.” This became the nursery for the ever-growing number of children, as Elizabeth and Henry eventually added another thirteen to their original eight. They slept on cots in the offices, easily put away when the general public arrived for race days. The Grand Stand kitchen was well equipped to cook for three thousand race-goers and stocked with dishes enough to serve them. Imagine taking a turn on kitchen duty in the days before automatic dishwashers!
During Derby week, when the Grand Stand was bustling with paying race-goers, the children were sent off in groups of two or three to spend a few days with various relatives, or to Henry’s other office in town. Bella later referred to the chore of moving “that living cargo of children,” along with the clothing and playthings that went with them.
There is no mention of Bella’s education (she was probably too busy babysitting!) until she was sixteen. After briefly attending a school in Islington, her generous stepfather arranged for her to study in Germany, where young ladies (not only gentlemen) could receive a fine education. There she learned to play the piano beautifully and to speak German and French. Bella also had her first proper training in a kitchen, and was commended by the headmistress for her flair in the culinary arts.
At Miss Heidel’s School in Germany, Bella Mayson re-encountered her childhood friends, the Beeton sisters. On her return to England, it was natural that she should meet with their charming brother, Samuel, as well.
Sam’s shining professional moment had come the previous year when he became the first British publisher of a hugely popular American book called Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe. This book told the stories, the sorrows, and quiet triumphs of several slaves in the southern United States. It sold 200,000 copies in Britain in its first year.
But Sam was even keener about the magazines he published, always coming up with new ideas for content, and for selling more copies. Unfortunately, Sam’s head for business was not as sharp as his eye for innovative material. He couldn’t seem to keep hold of the profits from his projects. This is where Bella hoped she could help. Although gentlewomen were not encouraged to work in the mid-1800s, or to pursue any sort of interest beyond the hobby level, being able to keep accounts and understand numbers was considered a feminine quality. After all, who else would manage the household budget and pay the servants and the merchants’ bills? Men were off earning the money; women needed to learn how to spend it wisely.
Bella’s stepfather, Henry, did not like Sam too well, but for some reason he agreed to their engagement. The custom of courtship in those days consisted of the man visiting the woman on Sunday afternoons in the company of her family. They might occasionally go to a concert or play, accompanied by a chaperon. Time alone was almost impossible.
After about six months of critical scrutiny, Sam nearly gave up, and stopped coming to the house for a while. This may have been frustrating for the engaged couple, but it was lucky for history, because it meant that they wrote letters often. Bella asked her fiancé to burn her letters, but he kept most of them for the rest of his life—nearly forty were found in one of his pockets when he died.
Although dependent on horses, mail service was much quicker in those days than it is now, and a letter posted in the morning might be delivered the same afternoon. Bella wrote more often than Sam did, so it sometimes felt like a lopsided conversation. She frequently pushed Sam to visit her, but then regretted her outburst in the next letter. Mostly she was eager, longing, for her married life to begin. “We shall get on as merrily as crickets,” she told Sam. It is easy to track the growth of attachment between the young sweethearts by looking at the signatures. From the early, almost formal “Yours most affectionately, Isabella Mayson,” the warmth increases to “Yours with all love’s devotion, Bella Mayson.”
Sam and Bella’s wedding, in 1856, took place at the Grand Stand in Epsom, with eight bridesmaids and plenty of champagne. Bella’s dress was made of white satin. Her stepfather’s wedding gift of a white piano was clearly intended for Bella, but of course Sam loved to hear her play.
Several months after her honeymoon in Europe, and already pregnant, Bella began to write articles about cookery and fashion for one of her husband’s publications, called The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine: An Illustrated Journal Combining Practical Information, Instruction, and Amusement. Bella’s lifelong concern with spending money wisely was evident in her first appearance in print. She addressed her readers directly, urging them to buy their supplies in bulk:
To wives and housekeepers
… the purchase of an ounce of this thing, or a quarter of a pound of that, is an error.… potatoes should come in a sack … apples by the bushel … you will, upon the whole, have more and pay less; be free of the worry of sending out continually for small supplies, and have at hand a stock to meet emergencies.
In the spring of 1857, Bella began a regular column, one month after her twenty-first birthday and just before the birth of her first son, named Samuel for his father. But the baby was not healthy, and died of croup when he was only three months old. Babies were far more likely to die in those days, without the medicines that are now available. Few families were lucky enough not to lose at least one infant.
Bella missed writing one month’s column, but she got straight back to work, despite the sadness she must have been feeling. She became more involved in the fashion pages of the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, encouraging her readers to think more about their clothing and style—an interest that only the wealthy and unoccupied women of society had followed until then.
Bella made dress and embroidery patterns available for order by the magazine-reading public, something that had not been done before. Her knowledge of French helped make Parisian fashions more accessible to the English readership. She also seems to have translated French culinary instructions, and perhaps French novels for use as serialized fiction. Printing books a chapter at a time in a monthly magazine was a well-established ploy to entice readers back for more.
As Bella juggled her new duties as a wife and homemaker along with work, she realized that all young brides must find themselves jarred by the sudden expectation that they should know all the things their mothers had learned in a lifetime of experience.
During this time in England, a new social class was emerging: between the well-bred upper class and the struggling working class, there was now a middle class. Traditionally, only those born into nobility could enjoy a privileged life, but now there were merchants and businessmen, attorneys and bankers, who were financially successful and who owned homes—often more than one. At the same time, swarms of young people moving from the country to the big city of London were available for hire. In many cases, the only thing a country girl knew how to do was to help keep a house. That’s what she’d been doing on a farm or in her own home in the village, after all. She could be employed in exchange for a place to sleep and her meals. Even people in the middle class could afford servants.
Usually, the household was considered a woman’s realm. Men were expected to earn the money, and their wives were expected to spend it on making the home an appealing place to come back to after a hard day of business or politics. Men did not give much thought to the astounding range of skills required to run a house well. There was no training for young wives beyond what they may have learned from their mothers. They were often dependent on the experience of the servants.
Probably the most important servant was the cook. In Isabella’s words, “It is upon her that the whole responsibility of the business of the kitchen rests.” Providing four meals a day (breakfast, dinner or luncheon, tea, and supper) for the family and the staff was an enormous undertaking. When guests came to dine, or to visit for several days, the task was multiplied.
In Isabella’s day, most households were not equipped with electricity. There were no refrigerators, no microwaves, no toasters, no blenders, no electric can openers—no cans! (Cans, called “tins” in England, were first made of heavy iron. They were invented for use by the British Navy in 1813, and they came with the instruction: “Cut round the top near the outer edge with a chisel and hammer.”) The fuel used for cooking was coal or wood, and the rooms were lit with gaslight. The heat and smells from the ovens and burning gas could be nearly overwhelming.
To help new housewives, Bella and Sam introduced another feature to the monthly Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, something beyond fashion forecasts, natural history lessons, and the fancy colored illustrations. They created what was called a “supplement” that could be purchased for three pence more—an extra manual with recipes, serving advice, and tips on keeping a home running smoothly.
Bella’s idea of putting two years’ worth of supplements together into one volume seemed at first to be a simple way of creating a cookbook. Most of the writing had been done already; all that was needed was some organization and filling in here and there. But, in her introduction, Bella confessed that it was a task far bigger than she’d anticipated: “I must frankly own, that if I had known, beforehand, that this book would have cost me the labour which it has, I should never have been courageous enough to commence it.”
That may be the summation of most writers’ feelings when partway through a new endeavor, but Bella’s book turned out to be FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SIX THOUSAND WORDS!! (As a comparison, the book you are reading is less than one-tenth that length.) Even the full title was a mouthful: The Book of Household Management: Comprising information for the Mistress, Housekeeper, Cook, Kitchen-Maid, Butler, Footman, Coachman, Valet, Upper and Under House-Maids, Lady’s-Maid, Maid-of-all-Work, Laundry-Maid, Nurse and Nurse-Maid, Monthly Wet and Sick Nurses, etc. etc. Also Sanitary, Medical, & Legal Memoranda: with a History of the Origin, Properties, and Uses of all Things Connected with Home Life and Comfort.
Bella’s intention was to make ordinary women knowledgeable, skilled, and efficient, by providing information that would allow them not to fumble. “Dine we must,” she wrote, “and we may as well dine elegantly as well as wholesomely.” The book began with these words: “AS WITH THE COMMANDER OF AN ARMY, or the leader of any enterprise, so is it with the mistress of a house.” And Bella went on—for more than 2,500 pages—to illuminate quite a stunning range of essential wisdom. In the process, she did several things that no one else had done before. She listed the recipes in alphabetical order, and she introduced what were thought of as “foreign” foods to the English housewife; recipes for Dampfnudeln (German puddings), or curried beef, or Spanish bread had not been commonly available before. (“The bread in the south of Spain is delicious: it is white as snow, close as cake, and yet very light; the flavour is most admirable, for the wheat is good and pure, and the bread well kneaded.”)
Following the tradition of the Englishwomen’s Domestic Magazine, where botany was part of gardening articles and chemistry might come under cooking or nursing, Bella provided an extensive history for many of the ingredients of her recipes. From cloves and Egyptian geese, to melons and herring, she shared fascinating details on where food came from.
Perhaps the most lasting contribution to future generations of culinary artists was twofold: she standardized both the measurements and the format of recipes. Until then, directions might have included using “a pinch” of this or “a handful” of that. Bella introduced the teaspoon, the tablespoon, and the cup, explaining the exact amount that was meant by those terms.
She also popularized a layout that all recipes would follow, beginning the instructions with a list of the ingredients. As obvious as this seems today, it was not then the custom—often an ingredient would be mentioned when its time came to enter the recipe, much as a new character could suddenly make an entrance in a story. A woman named Eliza Acton, who wrote a cookbook a few years earlier than Bella, had been the first to use this model, but Bella often gets the credit, and certainly she perfected the system. Having a complete list of ingredients available at a glance made things simpler, and Bella then made “a plain statement of the mode of preparing each dish, and a careful estimate of its cost, the number of people for whom it is sufficient, and the time when it is seasonable.”
Here is an example, in her recipe for Honey Cake:
1758. INGREDIENTS—½ breakfast-cupful of sugar, 1 breakfast-cupful of rich sour cream, 2 breakfast-cupfuls of flour, ½ teaspoonful of carbonate of soda, honey to taste.
Mode.—Mix the sugar and cream together; dredge in the flour, with as much honey as will flavour the mixture nicely; stir it well, that all the ingredients may be thoroughly mixed; add the carbonate of soda, and beat the cake well for another 5 minutes; put it into a buttered tin, bake it from ½ to ¾ hour, and let it be eaten warm.
Time. ½ to ¾ hour.
Average cost. 8d.
Sufficient for 3 or 4 persons.
Seasonable at any time.
Some of the other desserts and sweets have delicious-sounding names, like “Dutch Flummery,” “Fairy Butter,” “Roly-Poly Jam Pudding,” or “A Nice Plain Cake for Children.”
Bella’s recommendations for baby food, however, are not so appealing: “Baked flour, when cooked into a pale brown mass, and finely powdered, makes a far superior food to the others, and may be considered as a very useful diet.” Bella also quotes Florence Nightingale, the renowned nurse, on the subject of the best diet for children: “Let them eat meat and drink milk, or half a glass of light beer …”
Bella offered dozens of food categories, such as Vegetables, Fishes, Common Hog, Puddings and Pastry, Quadrupeds (animals with four legs), and Invalid cookery (for people who are ill). Under Invalid Cookery, for instance, there is a variety of offerings to tempt the appetite of a sick person, including Barley Gruel, Baked Beef Tea, Stewed Calf’s Foot, Nutritious Coffee, Eel Broth, Egg Wine, and Toast Sandwiches:
INGREDIENTS: Thin cold toast, thin slices of bread-and-butter, pepper and salt to taste.
Mode: Place a very thin piece of cold toast between 2 slices of thin bread-and-butter in the form of a sandwich, adding a seasoning of pepper and salt.
She also gave useful advice on selecting the best rabbit: “For boiling, choose rabbits with smooth and sharp claws, as that denotes they are young: should these be blunt and rugged, the ears dry and tough, the animal is old.” And how to serve it after cooking: “Dish it, and smother it either with onion, mushroom, or liver sauce, or parsley-and-butter …”
The original cover of The Book of Household Management clearly states “Edited By Mrs. Isabella Beeton,” a firm declaration that all the information within had not necessarily originated from her pen, but that she had collected, modified, and refined the recipes and other advice. Although she has been accused of plagiarism and using other people’s work, there were precedents for this kind of literary assemblage. The Brothers Grimm, for instance, had used a similar technique when gathering the fairy stories and folklore identified as Grimm’s Fairy Tales; they spoke to dozens of women and raked up old family legends and classic yarns before choosing which versions to copy down for posterity.
When Bella lifted a recipe from the book of a famous and reputable chef, she usually trusted that it worked and did not test it in her own kitchen. However, there were dozens of foods that she did test and perhaps alter, adding to the hours of labor that went into the original version of the book.
In some cases, Bella gave credit to the chefs she was “borrowing” from, but not always. Eliza Acton, in particular, felt that credit to her was neglected. Occasionally (without naming), Bella acknowledged the existence of another cook in the text, as in this line: “A great authority in culinary matters suggests the addition of a little cayenne pepper in gingerbread. Whether it be advisable to use this latter ingredient or not, we leave our readers to decide.”
If she wasn’t busy enough during the winter of 1858, Bella became pregnant again, but found time to open a soup kitchen for the village children, testing a recipe, Useful Soup for Benevolent Purposes, that she later put in her book.
The Beetons’ second baby was born just as Bella finished the testing and main editing on the Book of Household Management. Following common custom, he was also named Samuel. By this time, the Beetons were living in a village on the outskirts of London, but Bella worked alongside her husband in a newly acquired city office. She caused quite a flurry of upset on the morning train when she joined the ranks of male commuters.
The baby was six months old when his parents took a business trip to Paris without him. Although far too busy in her normal life to write a journal, Bella kept notes of the excursion in a miniature leather diary. She wrote with a pencil in the tiny squares, keeping track of the dates, the places, and the cost of everything, as well as brief character sketches of their fellow travelers. “Square face,” she wrote, or “sleek Doctor with a white beard and moustaches,” “very stout English lady with a huge crinoline,” “lonely French female” …
In October 1861, The Book of Household Management was finally published, with a publicity campaign that sold the book this way:
A NEW AND PRACTICAL WORK
Adapted for every family
and one that will save money every day
and last a life-time.
The advertising worked well, because the book sold sixty thousand copies in the first year and over two million within the decade.
Bella prided herself on being practical and efficient with words as well as in the kitchen. She is known for having coined certain phrases that are still a common part of our language, such as, “A place for everything and everything in its place.”
She had no control over the health of her children, however. At Christmastime in 1862, the second Samuel became ill with scarlet fever—in the days before penicillin—and died at three and a half years.
After a break, while she became busier and more famous due to the book, Bella gave birth on New Year’s Eve to a third son, called Orchart, this time taking his father’s middle name. He was perfectly healthy, and just a year younger than his uncle, Bella’s new and final brother, Horace.
Sixteen months after Orchart was born, in 1865, Bella had her fourth baby, another boy, named Mayson. She was twenty-eight years old. By the next day, Bella was sick with puerperal fever, an illness that used to be sadly common for women who had just given birth. Bella died within a week, leaving two small boys and a heartbroken Sam. Many generations of readers and cooks have benefited from Bella’s exuberant scribbling, cut way too short. Even if her name is no longer a household word, her legacy is in every recipe we use to make a meal.
Perhaps the easiest recipe in the book is this favorite dessert, item number 1602:
BOX OF CHOCOLATE
This is served in an ornamental box, placed on a glass plate or dish.
Seasonable: May be purchased at any time.
Among the more than nine hundred recipes in The Book of Household Management, Isabella Beeton included suggestions for swans, boar, rabbit, and deer.
Mary Kingsley, however, tasted even more exotic creatures. She had tips for cooking hippopotamus, snake, and crocodile …