![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Lady Maclean's Cook Book
Nov. 25th, 2005 09:16 pmI found Lady Maclean's Cook Book in a charity shop; it is a handsome large-format paperback, the type of cook book in which the recipes are reproduced in the form in which they have been contributed - typed or handwritten on headed paper by a variety of well-wishers. Usually these books are produced by charities, but Lady Maclean has rallied her aristocratic friends - and their cooks - to produce what she describes as "my own very personal scrapbook". I knew I had to have it when I found the recipe for "The Byculla Soufflé" - "a very Edwardian dish... the pride of the Byculla Club in Bombay" (a sweet mousse in which layers of cream are flavoured with different liqueurs - Chartreuese, Benedictine and Maraschino - and set with gelatine).
But it was not until I got it home and read the prefatory note from Lady Maclean's husband ("When I married, I weighed ten stone. Now I weigh fifteen. Need I say more?") that I recognised Fitzroy Maclean, traveller, writer and alleged model for James Bond. His recipe for "Plov from Samarkand" (a pilav of mutton and rice), handwritten on the notepaper of the Hotel Samarkand, faces a recipe for Beyandi Kebab on the notepaper of the British Embassy in Istanbul. The book, in other words, should not be taken at face value as a relic of an insular aristocracy. My paperback edition is dated 1986, but it was first published in 1965, and was already aware that the Byculla Soufflé was a museum piece. Recipes gathered from as many cultures as possible sit alongside such traditional dishes as the Grouse Salad I discussed in an earlier post. There are more recipes for game than you would find in most modern books: but one of them, for venison stewed in red wine, is contributed by Elizabeth David. (The Duchess of Devonshire contributes a chocolate cake).
( Three recipes )
But it was not until I got it home and read the prefatory note from Lady Maclean's husband ("When I married, I weighed ten stone. Now I weigh fifteen. Need I say more?") that I recognised Fitzroy Maclean, traveller, writer and alleged model for James Bond. His recipe for "Plov from Samarkand" (a pilav of mutton and rice), handwritten on the notepaper of the Hotel Samarkand, faces a recipe for Beyandi Kebab on the notepaper of the British Embassy in Istanbul. The book, in other words, should not be taken at face value as a relic of an insular aristocracy. My paperback edition is dated 1986, but it was first published in 1965, and was already aware that the Byculla Soufflé was a museum piece. Recipes gathered from as many cultures as possible sit alongside such traditional dishes as the Grouse Salad I discussed in an earlier post. There are more recipes for game than you would find in most modern books: but one of them, for venison stewed in red wine, is contributed by Elizabeth David. (The Duchess of Devonshire contributes a chocolate cake).
( Three recipes )
