Love the inclusion of Marguerite Patten’s book on Pressure Cooking here as it was seminal. She was brilliant and generous and gave me lots of good advice and encouragement when I started writing about pressure cookers. However, I do view the 1970s pressure cooker trend with mixed feelings. There are so many horror stories from that time and people have long memories, it has made my job much harder today - the biggest hurdle in pressure cooking today is getting people over the fear factor!
Thank you, Ruby! I thoroughly enjoyed this: “This makes White Heat the cookbook equivalent of Mary Poppins – a film that everybody remembers for one or two memorable songs, but which is, in fact, about banking.”
Fantastic piece, not just for the choice of books but the way Ruby captures so accurately exactly how and why they changed the way we cook (or how we see chefs) in the UK. Absolutely love the way Ruby thinks and writes.
I learnt so much from this, thank you! I would also add the quiet revolution of Ruby's own Cook As You Are to this list - for its accessibility, inclusiveness, thorough and gracious referencing of cooks and cuisines, and groundedness in everyday cooking. And the illustrations by Sinae Park deserve their own mention too!
A real pleasure to read this elegantly written piece which treats cookbooks with thoughtful respect and tangible affection. Such interesting, insightful cookbook choices; happy to see Rosamund Grant's African & Caribbean Cookery.
Great selection, thanks Ruby. My mother had many of these books when I was growing up and learning to cook. They truly changed how our family ate and opened my eyes from a small village in Cornwall to the wider world of taste and cooking.
I snagged a copy of the Carrier for $3 at an estate sale in Michigan last July, but had never heard of it or him before then, and hadn’t realized it was anything significant until now!
A lecturer at my first art school in Blackburn gave me the paperback copies of this and The Robert Carrier Cookbook. A generous 18th birthday gift that changed my life. It was the way Carrier wrote about food that made them my favourite bedtime reading. I have never forgotten the scene he described of eating stuffed goose neck in Tante Gustell's basement at Christmas, though I may have forgotten how to spell her name.
One of the nice things about the rise of Ottolenghi was how he stayed pretty anonymous at the beginning - while I got obsessed with cooking from his early books I don't think I knew what he looked like. Even now he only pops up on screens a little bit.
Where are any of Madhur Jaffrey’s books? She is the pioneer of Indian cookery writing especially for a Western audience. Dishoom is focused on a singular part of Indian cuisine that is from Bombay mostly. Quite disappointing from Vittles.
Aside from this being '15 Cookbooks', not 'THE 15 Cookbooks' (and therefore, not a zero sum game), perhaps the brief of this article has been misunderstood. This not a list of books by cuisine, but about the mechanisms through which a cookbook can be influential: in the case of Madhur Jaffrey's books, they were up against Ken Hom, not Dishoom, as they both wielded influence through cookbooks aligned with TV shows. Ultimately we went with Ken Hom - on another day it could have been Madhur. If it was about Indian cookery books in general we would have probably picked Indian Cooking by Savitri Chowdhary, which predates Madhur Jaffrey's first book.
Thanks Ruby I did read the article before commenting and did understand the brief of the article. So instead of being patronising, let us agree to disagree politely. Published articles should be allowed to be critiqued.
You're very welcome to critique the article - if you find the omission disappointing, we're also allowed to explain our reasoning. Like many other cookbook authors we admire, we considered Madhur Jaffrey right up until the final selection. Ultimately, she is included on every list of influential cookbooks, including the NYT list, and we wanted to offer something different.
Thank you, Jonathan, for explaining your reasoning and taking the time to reply. More often than not, these lists become subjective and never a single point of reference. It is with good reason that she is on every list, so her omission then becomes glaringly obvious, even with the best intentions of wanting to offer something different.
Marguerite Patten would have been a must, but great choice to go with Pressure Cooking. Its intriguing to consider if the book might have influenced the use of pressure cookers in India, the place where they have really been transformational, particularly to the lives of so many women who were able to shorten their time in the kitchen so much.
Mrs.Balbir Singh, who studied home sciences in the UK around then, recommended pressure cooking in her influential Indian Cooking book and I think HD Vasudeva, who launched Hawkins, one of the big two manufacturers in India, was guided by looking at actuarial data from the UK about accidents involving pressure cookers, which - contrary to alarmist anecdotes - allowed him to conclude that the devices were safe enough to promote.
Veerasamy didn't actually exist, at least under that name. EP stands for Edward Palmer, the Anglo-Indian man, who used that name to promote products, the cookbook and restaurant branded with that name.
And Hawkins' marketing slogan being specifically "Hawkins doesn't easily burst open due to pressure" (its lid closes through the inside of the pot rather than on top)! I've found the fear of pressure cookers among western home cooks endlessly fascinating given their ubiquitous use in Indian kitchens including cramped ones, one room houses and street side stalls. Please commission a piece on this @vittles
I think the truth might be somewhere in-between. If pressure cooker accidents were over reported in the West, they might have been under reported in India. I remember regular short newspaper reports about a pressure cooker exploding and injuries being suffered, and then it was forgotten. The victims were often poorer women, so easily overlooked. In that sense, the widely reported horror stories in the West probably did prevent many accidents. (And then there were also pressure cooker bombs, which are another kind of danger!) Hawkins is, unfortunately, a famously reticent company, but its major competitor, Prestige has published a book, by TT Jagannathan along with Sandhya Mendonca, about its history with pressure cookers. Its a corporate history, so obviously not neutral, but you do get a sense of the problems it took, resulting in its addition of a safety gasket. More than the dangers, I think the big reason for it lagging in the West was that its main use there, for canning, was supplanted by manufacturers. In India, its use for making dal, gave it a huge new push, plus the fact that it could be used, with weight removed, to cook rice, meant that it pre-empted the rice cooker that became so important in East Asia.
I wouldn't easily put it down to just higher risk aversion or health & safety concerns among western cooks. Toasters are infamous for much worse accidents, but that hardly stops people from using them. There is probably something around cooking being more 'from-the-scratch' and gendered in South Asia, but won't venture further without having done any research on this. Relatedly, dunno if the OPOS trend still continues - where men, a few years pre-pandemic I think, specifically tried to codify pressure cooking into some kind of science and developed what I can call only facebook cults around this!
The OPOS trend was really rather cult-like! I think it peaked during Covid, particularly because more men had the time and need to do cooking, but one doesn't hear too much of it these days. What was interesting was that it was a kind of resurrection of a much older preoccupation with cooking gadgets and teaching women how to cook (whether they wanted or needed to learn, regardless) that goes back to the Icmic Cooker in the early 20th century in Calcutta. The basic problem with that, as I think with the OPOS trend, was that it made everything taste much the same, which isn't really how people like to eat - other than Soylent devotees, another male led trend that seems to have run its course. I guess many factors were involved in the differential development of pressure cookers, but one of the major ones, I think, was that manufacturers and supermarkets in the West simply started doing the work it did. Its main use would have continued in areas where these services were scarce or there were particular reasons for using it, like limited fuel (a friend from Zimbabwe insisted on buying one in Mumbai when he came for a visit, because of the scarcities in the last years of Mugabe's rule) or living at high altitudes, another place where pressure cookers are useful. But there was never much need for cooking pulses fast, the real reason it took off in India.
Can't claim with much authority coz I haven't done any serious research on it - but the prominence of pulses seems to be overestimated at least anecdotally in South India
Lots of pulse consumption in South India, but yes in somewhat different forms. Soaked pulses and rice ground together to make batter for idlis, dosai, etc. Hulled urad dal used in a tadka for a nutty taste. Pulse flours used in snacks, papads, batter for deep frying, etc. And, of course, pulses in sambhar and similar liquidy dals. What's less common is whole cooked pulses like rajma, lobia, channa (though black channa is common in Kerala) whose cooking really needs heavy duty pressure cooker action. But other uses were found for pressure cookers in South India. For example, with the weight removed and special pans put inside, it became an efficient idli steamer. And, rather than buying a separate rice cooker, it was used to make rice. Pressure cookers are also perfect for pongal/khichri - that mix of dals and grains breaks down under pressure to a perfect soft-gloopy consistency.
Loved this. I had or have a number of these books, but I was never a Delia or Mary Berry fan. I didn’t have the Robert Carrier but I had the periodicals (called Taste but no connection with the later magazine) which featured his name but actually contained recipes by other writers. I made the Normandy chicken and the French apple tart for my early dinner party efforts in the 1970s and there was one issue with Claudia Roden recipes, including for spanakopita, a recipe I still make from memory, though the magazines were destroyed in a fire sadly. I also collected the Sainsbury’s cookbooks by Josceline Dimbleby (Marvellous Meals with Mince anyone?) and still use her Cooking for Christmas.
Love the inclusion of Marguerite Patten’s book on Pressure Cooking here as it was seminal. She was brilliant and generous and gave me lots of good advice and encouragement when I started writing about pressure cookers. However, I do view the 1970s pressure cooker trend with mixed feelings. There are so many horror stories from that time and people have long memories, it has made my job much harder today - the biggest hurdle in pressure cooking today is getting people over the fear factor!
Thank you, Ruby! I thoroughly enjoyed this: “This makes White Heat the cookbook equivalent of Mary Poppins – a film that everybody remembers for one or two memorable songs, but which is, in fact, about banking.”
Fantastic piece, not just for the choice of books but the way Ruby captures so accurately exactly how and why they changed the way we cook (or how we see chefs) in the UK. Absolutely love the way Ruby thinks and writes.
Thank you Kavita!
I learnt so much from this, thank you! I would also add the quiet revolution of Ruby's own Cook As You Are to this list - for its accessibility, inclusiveness, thorough and gracious referencing of cooks and cuisines, and groundedness in everyday cooking. And the illustrations by Sinae Park deserve their own mention too!
A real pleasure to read this elegantly written piece which treats cookbooks with thoughtful respect and tangible affection. Such interesting, insightful cookbook choices; happy to see Rosamund Grant's African & Caribbean Cookery.
Great selection, thanks Ruby. My mother had many of these books when I was growing up and learning to cook. They truly changed how our family ate and opened my eyes from a small village in Cornwall to the wider world of taste and cooking.
I'm so pleased it resonated! Thank you
I snagged a copy of the Carrier for $3 at an estate sale in Michigan last July, but had never heard of it or him before then, and hadn’t realized it was anything significant until now!
A lecturer at my first art school in Blackburn gave me the paperback copies of this and The Robert Carrier Cookbook. A generous 18th birthday gift that changed my life. It was the way Carrier wrote about food that made them my favourite bedtime reading. I have never forgotten the scene he described of eating stuffed goose neck in Tante Gustell's basement at Christmas, though I may have forgotten how to spell her name.
🙌🙌🙌 so interesting and thoughtful
One of the nice things about the rise of Ottolenghi was how he stayed pretty anonymous at the beginning - while I got obsessed with cooking from his early books I don't think I knew what he looked like. Even now he only pops up on screens a little bit.
Great analysis, great writing!
Where are any of Madhur Jaffrey’s books? She is the pioneer of Indian cookery writing especially for a Western audience. Dishoom is focused on a singular part of Indian cuisine that is from Bombay mostly. Quite disappointing from Vittles.
Hi Vaishali,
Aside from this being '15 Cookbooks', not 'THE 15 Cookbooks' (and therefore, not a zero sum game), perhaps the brief of this article has been misunderstood. This not a list of books by cuisine, but about the mechanisms through which a cookbook can be influential: in the case of Madhur Jaffrey's books, they were up against Ken Hom, not Dishoom, as they both wielded influence through cookbooks aligned with TV shows. Ultimately we went with Ken Hom - on another day it could have been Madhur. If it was about Indian cookery books in general we would have probably picked Indian Cooking by Savitri Chowdhary, which predates Madhur Jaffrey's first book.
Thanks Ruby I did read the article before commenting and did understand the brief of the article. So instead of being patronising, let us agree to disagree politely. Published articles should be allowed to be critiqued.
Hi Vaishali,
You're very welcome to critique the article - if you find the omission disappointing, we're also allowed to explain our reasoning. Like many other cookbook authors we admire, we considered Madhur Jaffrey right up until the final selection. Ultimately, she is included on every list of influential cookbooks, including the NYT list, and we wanted to offer something different.
Jonathan
Thank you, Jonathan, for explaining your reasoning and taking the time to reply. More often than not, these lists become subjective and never a single point of reference. It is with good reason that she is on every list, so her omission then becomes glaringly obvious, even with the best intentions of wanting to offer something different.
Marguerite Patten would have been a must, but great choice to go with Pressure Cooking. Its intriguing to consider if the book might have influenced the use of pressure cookers in India, the place where they have really been transformational, particularly to the lives of so many women who were able to shorten their time in the kitchen so much.
Mrs.Balbir Singh, who studied home sciences in the UK around then, recommended pressure cooking in her influential Indian Cooking book and I think HD Vasudeva, who launched Hawkins, one of the big two manufacturers in India, was guided by looking at actuarial data from the UK about accidents involving pressure cookers, which - contrary to alarmist anecdotes - allowed him to conclude that the devices were safe enough to promote.
Veerasamy didn't actually exist, at least under that name. EP stands for Edward Palmer, the Anglo-Indian man, who used that name to promote products, the cookbook and restaurant branded with that name.
And Hawkins' marketing slogan being specifically "Hawkins doesn't easily burst open due to pressure" (its lid closes through the inside of the pot rather than on top)! I've found the fear of pressure cookers among western home cooks endlessly fascinating given their ubiquitous use in Indian kitchens including cramped ones, one room houses and street side stalls. Please commission a piece on this @vittles
I think the truth might be somewhere in-between. If pressure cooker accidents were over reported in the West, they might have been under reported in India. I remember regular short newspaper reports about a pressure cooker exploding and injuries being suffered, and then it was forgotten. The victims were often poorer women, so easily overlooked. In that sense, the widely reported horror stories in the West probably did prevent many accidents. (And then there were also pressure cooker bombs, which are another kind of danger!) Hawkins is, unfortunately, a famously reticent company, but its major competitor, Prestige has published a book, by TT Jagannathan along with Sandhya Mendonca, about its history with pressure cookers. Its a corporate history, so obviously not neutral, but you do get a sense of the problems it took, resulting in its addition of a safety gasket. More than the dangers, I think the big reason for it lagging in the West was that its main use there, for canning, was supplanted by manufacturers. In India, its use for making dal, gave it a huge new push, plus the fact that it could be used, with weight removed, to cook rice, meant that it pre-empted the rice cooker that became so important in East Asia.
I wouldn't easily put it down to just higher risk aversion or health & safety concerns among western cooks. Toasters are infamous for much worse accidents, but that hardly stops people from using them. There is probably something around cooking being more 'from-the-scratch' and gendered in South Asia, but won't venture further without having done any research on this. Relatedly, dunno if the OPOS trend still continues - where men, a few years pre-pandemic I think, specifically tried to codify pressure cooking into some kind of science and developed what I can call only facebook cults around this!
The OPOS trend was really rather cult-like! I think it peaked during Covid, particularly because more men had the time and need to do cooking, but one doesn't hear too much of it these days. What was interesting was that it was a kind of resurrection of a much older preoccupation with cooking gadgets and teaching women how to cook (whether they wanted or needed to learn, regardless) that goes back to the Icmic Cooker in the early 20th century in Calcutta. The basic problem with that, as I think with the OPOS trend, was that it made everything taste much the same, which isn't really how people like to eat - other than Soylent devotees, another male led trend that seems to have run its course. I guess many factors were involved in the differential development of pressure cookers, but one of the major ones, I think, was that manufacturers and supermarkets in the West simply started doing the work it did. Its main use would have continued in areas where these services were scarce or there were particular reasons for using it, like limited fuel (a friend from Zimbabwe insisted on buying one in Mumbai when he came for a visit, because of the scarcities in the last years of Mugabe's rule) or living at high altitudes, another place where pressure cookers are useful. But there was never much need for cooking pulses fast, the real reason it took off in India.
Can't claim with much authority coz I haven't done any serious research on it - but the prominence of pulses seems to be overestimated at least anecdotally in South India
Lots of pulse consumption in South India, but yes in somewhat different forms. Soaked pulses and rice ground together to make batter for idlis, dosai, etc. Hulled urad dal used in a tadka for a nutty taste. Pulse flours used in snacks, papads, batter for deep frying, etc. And, of course, pulses in sambhar and similar liquidy dals. What's less common is whole cooked pulses like rajma, lobia, channa (though black channa is common in Kerala) whose cooking really needs heavy duty pressure cooker action. But other uses were found for pressure cookers in South India. For example, with the weight removed and special pans put inside, it became an efficient idli steamer. And, rather than buying a separate rice cooker, it was used to make rice. Pressure cookers are also perfect for pongal/khichri - that mix of dals and grains breaks down under pressure to a perfect soft-gloopy consistency.
Loved this. I had or have a number of these books, but I was never a Delia or Mary Berry fan. I didn’t have the Robert Carrier but I had the periodicals (called Taste but no connection with the later magazine) which featured his name but actually contained recipes by other writers. I made the Normandy chicken and the French apple tart for my early dinner party efforts in the 1970s and there was one issue with Claudia Roden recipes, including for spanakopita, a recipe I still make from memory, though the magazines were destroyed in a fire sadly. I also collected the Sainsbury’s cookbooks by Josceline Dimbleby (Marvellous Meals with Mince anyone?) and still use her Cooking for Christmas.
Bravo! A really thoughtful analysis ..
Such a delicious read. I’d love to know how you chose these Ruby, how you whittled down what must have been a longer list.
gorgeous all round especially the moving from the Gutenberg to Battenberg press