25 AUGUST 1984, Page 17

American females

Sir: Does your cookery correspondent Digby Anderson (11 August) suffer from birdcage palate? Besides all that macho nonsense about stinking game, he appears to condone smoking between courses. This unpleasant habit seems to have been brought in by Simpsonian American females in the Twenties and Thirties; these ladies, Martinied to the eyeballi, knives laid aside, would chase their food round their plates without much caring what it was or whether indeed they caught it.

Michael Samuelson

Hollingwood, Stunts Green, Herstmonceux, Hailsham, East Sussex