Country cookery lore

Ruth Binney (David and Charles, £9.99)

You don’t have to have a kitchen bristling with equipment to be a good cook, though sharp knives and a few well-constructed pans will always come in useful.

What you need is to create tasty dishes is a genuine love of food, a knowledge of the ingredients you propose to use and a flair for matching flavours, tastes and textures — so says Ruth Binney, author of this delightful little book. While she takes a nostalgic look at the way food was prepared in the past, before the days of microwaves and bread-making machines, the book does contain some practical advice which could serve us all well in these days of rising prices.

Calling on kitchen lore of the past, old wives' tales and amusing kitchen anecdotes, along with advice from celebrated early cookery writers such as Mrs Beeton, Alexis Soyer and Constance Spry, this book details instructions which we can adopt with ease to ensure that we serve wholesome, tasty food in the 21st century.

Obviously, a great number of the dishes included are far too labour-intensive for today’s cook. Making the perfect consommé, for example, which requires a home-made stock base and at least four hours cooking time, is certainly not a practical option. And very few of today’s cooks will do more than smile at the advice to cooks to wear an apron while cooking, to keep their outer garments clean.

But the art of whipping cream so that it does not take on a granular, buttery consistency with liquid weeping from it, is certainly a useful tip worth taking seriously. So are the cook’s tips on preparing and cooking vegetables and using up stale bread by turning it into breadcrumbs, stuffing mix or bread-and-butter pudding.

This book is fun, containing much to amuse and much that can aid us all in the difficult task of providing good food, during a period when food costs are soaring.

Helen Peacocke