Mrs. Beeton

Have you ever heard of Mrs. Beeton? I hadn't until a few months ago. I'm a grad student right now, and I'll be writing my thesis on cookbooks as autobiographical documents. For a few weeks, I considered starting my research in the 19th century, which was when cookbooks began to come into form. Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management, while not the first cookbook ever written, is credited (often) with being the first cookbook to utilize the format of the recipe we are so familiar with today (meaning the ingredients are followed by the directions, which are often followed by yield, cost analysis, and nutritional information).

In addition to profoundly influencing the way recipes and cookbooks are written, Isabella Beeton also included a vast array of other information (the reason it's "Household Management" and not cooking). Her first chapter, in fact, is a description of everything a mistress should be. You can read all about it here at mrsbeeton.com. She describes the middle-class mistress and what she should be to be "put together," which of course aren't Mrs. Beeton's words at all, but describe it pretty well anyway.

What does all this have to do with anything?

Women have been trying to appear put together for ages. Andrea Broomfield, in her book Food and Cooking in Victorian England: A History, said that middle class women “put a great deal of emphasis on appearances and on ensuring their chances of success by doing precisely what they believed they should be doing to impress their ‘betters’ . . . as well as their social ‘equals.’” Does that not sound like they were pretty occupied with looking "put together"?


Of course, what was important to middle class Victorian women is not what is important to us now. Some issues have stuck, of course, such as being able to put together a delicious meal in a frugal way, but the requirements of that meal are obviously quite different. We have our own standards of what it means to be "put together" now, and while what Mrs. Beeton suggested for her contemporaries was important for them, it doesn't help us much now. 


There are dozens of texts out there that do help us, and I suppose it's up to us to select one that applies well to our own lives, and then to actually use it well. Nothing will work perfectly for everyone. I used to have a book that I really liked, but it has been lost. I hope it will eventually turn up. It's called The Ultimate Career by Daryl Hoole, one of the co-authors of the old The Art of Homemaking. The one I had was directed at a Mormon audience, but still had excellent advice for general housekeeping and financial strategies...but you know what? It was still only one woman's way of making it work. I wish I had it as a reference as I begin my journey, but we all know what needs to be done. We just have to find our own way of doing it.