Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, also published as Mrs. Beeton's Cookery Book, is an extensive guide to running a household in Victorian Britain, edited by Isabella Beeton and first published as a book in 1861. Previously published in parts, it initially and briefly bore the title Beeton's Book of Household Management, as one of the series of guidebooks published by her husband, Samuel Beeton. The recipes were highly structured, in contrast to those in earlier cookbooks. It was illustrated with many monochrome and colour plates.

Although Mrs. Beeton died in 1865, the book continued to be a best-seller. The first editions after her death contained an obituary notice, but later editions did not, allowing readers to imagine that every word was written by an experienced Mrs. Beeton personally. Many of the recipes were copied from the most successful cookery books of the day, including Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery for Private Families (first published in 1845), Elizabeth Raffald's The Experienced English Housekeeper (originally published in 1769), Marie-Antoine Carême's Le Pâtissier royal Parisien (1815), Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747), Maria Eliza Rundell's A New System of Domestic Cookery (1806), and the works of Charles Elmé Francatelli (1805–1876). This practice of Mrs. Beeton's has in modern times repeatedly been described as plagiarism.

The book expanded steadily in length until by 1907 it reached 74 chapters and over 2,000 pages. Nearly two million copies were sold by 1868, and it remains in print. Between 1875 and 1914 it was probably the most often-consulted cookery book. Mrs. Beeton has been compared on the strength of the book with modern "domestic goddesses" like Nigella Lawson and Delia Smith.

History

The author, Isabella Beeton, was 21 years old when she started working on the book. It was initially serialised in 24 monthly instalments, in her husband Samuel Orchart Beeton's publication The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine; the first instalment appeared in 1859. On 1 October 1861, the instalments were collected into one volume with the title 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.

In its preface she wrote:

Beeton's half-sister, Lucy Smiles, was later asked by her son about her memories of the book's development, for the centenary of Beeton's birth, 1936. She recalled:

Previously published as a part-work, it was first published as a book in 1861 by S. O. Beeton Publishing, 161 Bouverie Street, London, a firm founded by Samuel Beeton. The book was an immediate best-seller, selling 60,000 copies in its first year and totalling nearly two million by 1868. In 2010 a copy of the first edition of Household Management in "top condition" was stated to be worth more than £1,000. In 1863 a revised edition was issued.

In 1866, a year after Isabella's death, Samuel was in debt due to the collapse of Overend and Gurney, a London discount house to which he owed money. To save himself from bankruptcy he sold the copyright to all of his publications for a little over £19,000. Of that, the rights to Household Management were sold to publishers Ward, Lock and Tyler for £3,250. The early editions included an obituary notice for Beeton, but the publishers insisted it be removed "allowing readers to imagineperhaps even as late as 1915that some mob-capped matriarch was out there still keeping an eye on them".

Revisions to Household Management by its publisher have continued to the present day. The effort has kept the Beeton name in the public eye for over 125 years, although current editions are far removed from those published in Mrs. Beeton's lifetime. By 1906 the book had 2,056 pages, "exclusive of advertising", with 3,931 recipes and was "half as large again" as the previous edition.

Book

Contents

The following description refers to the 1907 edition; the book was greatly extended in the decades since Mrs. Beeton's death (in 1865) to 74 chapters and over 2000 pages;Beeton, 1907 edition. the first edition had 44 chapters.Beeton, 1861 edition.

The book begins with general chapters on the duties of the "mistress", the housekeeper, and the cook. There follow chapters on the kitchen itself, "marketing" (choosing good-quality produce at the market), and an introduction to cookery (Chapter 6).Beeton, 1907. Chapters 1 to 6 Together, these take up over 100 pages. Chapters seven to 38 (roughly 1000 pages) cover English cooking, with recipes for soups, gravies, fish, meat (principally veal, beef, mutton and lamb, and pork), poultry, game, preserves, vegetables, pastries, puddings, sweets, jams, pickles, and savouries.Beeton, 1907. Chapters 7 to 38 Chapter 39 describes the "art of carving at table", supported by eleven illustrations.Beeton, 1907. Chapter 39 Chapters 40 to 50 (some 200 pages) give instructions for dairy products, vegetarian and invalid (sick person) cookery, making bread, biscuits and cakes, and beverages.Beeton, 1907. Chapters 40 to 50 Chapters 51 to 59 describe cooking in various international styles including French, German, Spanish, Jewish, Australian, South African, Indian, American, and Canadian cookery.Beeton, 1907. Chapters 51 to 59 Chapters 60 to 68 guide on matters from trussing poultry to the definitions of culinary terms, arranging meals, decorating the table, making menus, and the duties of domestic servants.Beeton, 1907. Chapters 60 to 68 Chapters 69 to 73 describe "household recipes" and medical preparations.Beeton, 1907. Chapters 69 to 73 The final chapter, 74, offers "legal memoranda".Beeton, 1907. Chapter 74

There is a detailed index. The edition includes advertisements for products such as "Lemco" beef extract and "Cadbury's Cocoa".

Approach

The preface sets out the book's goal of providing men with such well-cooked food at home that it may compete with what they could eat "at their clubs, well-ordered taverns, and dining-houses". Mrs. Beeton claims that:

She explains that she was thus attempting to make the basics of cookery "intelligible" to any "housewife".

The first chapter sets the tone of the book with a quotation from the Book of Proverbs, and in early editions cites also The Vicar of Wakefield with:Beeton. "The Mistress".

The book thus advocates early rising, cleanliness, frugality, good temper, and the wisdom of interviewing servants rather than relying on written references.

Cookery is introduced with words about "the progress of mankind from barbarism to civilization", with a mention of man "in his primitive state, [living] upon roots and the fruits of the earth", rising to become in turn "a hunter and a fisher"; then a "herdsman" and finally "the comfortable condition of a farmer." It is granted that "the fruits of the earth, the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, and the fish of the sea, are still the only food of mankind", but that:Beeton. "Cookery".

The text then swiftly passes to a description of simple measures like a table-spoonful, and the duties of servants.

The whole rest of the book is taken up with instructions for cooking, with an introduction in each chapter to the type of food it describes. The first of these, on soups, begins "Lean, juicy beef, mutton, and veal form the basis of all good soups; therefore it is advisable to procure those pieces which afford the richest succulence, and such as are fresh-killed." The account of how to make soup consists of a single essay, divided into general advice and numbered steps for making any kind of (meat-based) soup. This is followed in early editions by a separate chapter of recipes for soups of different kinds.Beeton. "Stock and Soups".

Each recipe is structured into a title, a list of ingredients (with quantities, either naturalas a number of eggs or vegetables, a number of slices of hamor measured in Imperial unitsounces of salt, quarts of water. The actual instructions are headed "Mode", as "Cut up the veal, and put it with the bones and trimmings of poultry". A separate section gives the overall preparation time, and the average cost as, for example, "9d. per quart". Many recipes state in separate brief sections when a recipe is "seasonable" and for how many persons it is "sufficient". Finally, a "note" gives any required advice, such as "When stronger stock is desired, double the quantity of veal, or put in an old fowl." This highly structured presentation was the book's main innovation.

Oddities

Despite professing to be a guide of reliable information about every aspect of running a house for the aspirant middle classes, the original edition devotes 23 pages to household management, then discusses cooking for almost all of the other 900. Even with the emphasis on food, some of her cooking advice is so odd as to suggest that she had little experience preparing meals. For example, the book recommends boiling pasta for an hour and forty-five minutes. Like many other British people of her social class and generation, Mrs. Beeton adopted a distaste for unfamiliar foods, saying that mangoes tasted like turpentine, lobsters were indigestible, garlic was offensive, potatoes were "suspicious; a great many are narcotic, and many are deleterious", cheese could only be consumed by sedentary people, and tomatoes were either good or bad for a range of reasons.

Unlike earlier cookbook authors, such as Hannah Glasse, the book offered an "emphasis on thrift and economy". It also discarded the style of previous writers who employed "daunting paragraph[s] of text with ingredients and method jumbled up together" for what is a recognisably modern "user-friendly formula listing ingredients, method, timings and even the estimated cost of each recipe".

Plagiarism

In a critical letter, Mrs. Beeton's acquaintance Mrs. Henrietta Mary Pourtois English advised her that "Cookery is a Science that is only learnt by Long Experience and years of study which of course you have not had. Therefore my advice would be to compile a book from recipes from a Variety of the Best Books published on Cookery and Heaven knows there is a great variety for you to choose from." The recipes were largely copied from the most successful cookery books of the day, the copying in several cases unacknowledged in the text. The "variety" included Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery for Private Families and her The English Bread–Book, Elizabeth Raffald's The Experienced English Housekeeper, Marie-Antoine Carême's Le Pâtissier royal Parisien, Louis Eustache Ude's The French Cook, Alexis Soyer's The Modern Housewife or, Ménagère and The Pantropheon, Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, Maria Eliza Rundell's A New System of Domestic Cookery, and the works of Charles Elmé Francatelli. Published under Creative Commons Attribution Licence