While France was establishing the classics of cuisine and pastry, England triumphantly led the way with books on household economy, most of them written by women, for women. The tone of these books continued to be encouraging but tinged with the self-righteousness that was to characterize Victorian culture. Mrs. Rundell’s A New System of Domestic Cookery (1806), with its almost intimidating detail of what the well-informed housewife should and should not do, was a forerunner of the classic household encyclopedia. She opens her “Miscellaneous Observations” with the bracing “In every rank, those deserve the greatest praise, who best acquit themselves of the duties which their station requires.” Her recipes catalog the classic English repertoire that continues today—dressed crab, scalloped oysters, boiled fowl with rice, bread-and-butter pudding, beef olives, queen of puddings, and orange marmalade are just a few—written in a direct style that assumes only basic culinary knowledge.
