Whose stew?
CLEMENT FREUD
Celebrity Cooking edited by Renee Hellman (Paul Hamlyn 18s)
People, I had always believed, purchased a cookery book because they had a high regard for the author; alternatively because they wanted to lay the blame for their culinary disasters firmly at a professional's door.
Celebrity Cooking affords the reader neither of these choices but would appear to base its sales expectations on an extension of one of Brillat-Savarin's more fatuous remarks: 'Tell me what a man eats and I'll tell you what he is' (Uttered in the original French, this does not sound one jot more convincing.) After a dis- arming foreword by a surgeon who informs readers that the royalties are going to a medi- cal charity, a preface by a company director who describes it as 'appetising,' and an intro- duction by the editor who gives a fast break- down of the contents ('Beatles do not cook ' but Ringo admits that his favourite dish is fried eggs well done with very brown chips and plenty of bread and butter'), we are off.
A full three hundred celebrities, who have been chosen with a catholicism that would make ERNIE green with jealousy, have con- tributed a recipe per head. The choices are grouped under the standard headings, soup, fish, meat, etc, and after each celebrity there is a brief biography in italics in case his or her fame has eluded you. (Thus did I become acquainted with the name of the ex-chairman of the Cerebos Salt Company—damn, I've forgotten it again.) As a reference book to put on a kitchen shelf and refer to in need of inspiration, this is a very unsuitable publi- cation; in fact on a number of occasions one would shout 'liar' and go back to Elizabeth David. The trouble is that the editor, with ad- mirable if misplaced modesty, has not messed around with the recipes but presents them in their pristine original, in which a number fail to work, and many more could be vastly un- proved—namely Lester Piggott's who, true to form, comes up with the shortest recipe in the book : 'Roll the Scampi in egg and flour. Cook in deep hot fat' To compensate us, Renee Hellman, who collected the brave three hundred, has made an attempt to present this as a complete cook- book and gives the sort of recipes, like white sauce and biscuit dough, which, for obvious reasons, her celebrities failed to provide. In common with the London Telephone Directory, it could fairly be said of Celebrity Cooking that there are too many characters and the plot is a bit weak..pn the other hand, awe aro fascinating aspects of the book—and it may advantageously be bought to provide compul- sive parlour games over the holiday season. A number of these present themselves.
Spot the Celebrity: the host reads out Celebrity Cooking's description of people and the first person to guess their identity gets half a crown; the second person has to cook the dish, and the last man with the correct solution will be made to eat it. Thus 'an impish author' is Richard Gordon—the loser has to consume elastic stew, of which Dr Gordon writes, 'after four hours give up and go to bed.' Who is the concert pianist and wife of Alec Sherman . . . (for half a mark, who is Alec Sherman)? If you are not yet in there, pitching, the descrip- tion goes on to say that 'she has played with various orchestras and has made tours of Israel, America, Norway and Greece. . .
Will anyone who said Gina Bachauer, or can pronounce the name, go to the top of the class. Her dish is Sty-fado. I shall say no more. Who is 'Dublin's own boy . . . who comperes his own spot'? Eamonn Andrews, no less. On a different note . . . who is Bud Flanaghan? The answer is Bud Flanagan. Will the proof- reader go to the bottom of the class.
The other and probably better game is to read out a recipe and try to guess the origina- tor. In the case of Enid Blyton—Fruit Salad which turned out to be a working-man's trifle —this was not difficult; and Ursula Bloom's Summertime Suppertime is terribly, terribly predictable. Ingredients: white fish, lime juice, water, green salad. The secret plot is that you flake the fish and do not cook it . . . and the author adds, 'this is my idea of heaven . . But when you get to vegetable soup you may well be struggling: the recipe takes up two full pages and finishes with the paragraph: 'As a final touch, in the springtime when nasturtiums are green and tender, you can take a few nasturtium stems, cut them up in small pieces, boil them separately as you did the barley and add them to your soup. There will be about one tablespoon of nasturtiums after cooking.'
That was General Eisenhower . . . possibly wanting you, too, to spend the longest day. The recipe for French Dressing—nine parts of oil to one of vinegar and, while he is at it, instructions on how to make half a gallon— is by Henry Ford II.
There is one thing the editor has done which is wholly admirable. It would have been easy for her to say : I am sorry, Mr Thorneycroft, Hermione Baddeley has already got Gazpacho; she did not, so we get two recipes—as we do with Ratatouille, nominated by Henry Cotton and Paul Hamlyn. For this she has my admira- tion; for bringing together a series of recipes, some of which work, some of which don't, and some of which were conceived as elaborate or less elaborate jokes, people will be less beholden.
I thought Stephen Potter's Haddock Soup (ingredients: the juice of a finnan haddock, margarine, flour, milk and curry powder) was possibly the nastiest serious dish on offer. Spike Milligan's Spaghetti b la Fred ('Take a strand of spaghetti, lay it face downwards on a marble slab and finds its magnetic north') the least help- ful, and David Frost's Creme Brigade (con- tributed by the chef of his Cambridge college) the most sensible way of coping with a request to a non-cook for a worthwhile_ contribution. Also I am sorry nobody nominated Bread and Butter Pudding or asked me.
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