Marguerite Patten, a home economist who told ration-pinched British families how to make a satisfying meal out of nothing during World War II, and later became one of the country’s first television chefs and the author of more than 170 cookbooks aimed at average Britons, died on June 4 in Richmond, Surrey. She was 99.
Her death was announced by her family. Known as the queen of ration-book cuisine, Ms. Patten worked in the advice division of the Ministry of Food, which was created in 1939 to oversee food distribution during the war.
She went to markets, hospitals and factory canteens, offering tips and giving demonstrations on how to make something out of virtually nothing, with wartime creations like “mock cream” and “mock duck.” She also dispensed advice and recipes on “The Kitchen Front,” a morning radio program on the BBC.
In the austerity years after the war, with rationing still in force, Ms. Patten continued to help British housewives desperate to put a meal on the table, introducing them to the pleasures of Spam and other exotica. When rationing came to an end in 1954, she incorporated new ingredients like olive oil and avocados into sensible, low-cost dishes that required a minimum of effort and time, primarily through her cookbooks, which sold some 17 million copies all told.
“Her name is still instantly recognizable to several generations of British people,” said Nicola Humble, a professor of English literature at the University of Roehampton in London. “Her books were determinedly unstylish — practical and unshowy — with lots of recipes for family supper dishes and well-described basics that people actually wanted to cook. Hers were, above all, the cookbooks that lived in people’s kitchens, rather than the ones in the living room.”
Hilda Elsie Marguerite Brown was born in Bath, Somerset, on Nov. 4, 1915, and grew up in High Barnet, Hertfordshire. After leaving school, she took a cooking course and found work as a junior home economist for an electrical company.
Stage-struck, she joined an acting company and appeared under the name Marguerite Eve for a season before being hired by Frigidaire to do demonstrations aimed at convincing housewives that they needed a refrigerator.
In 1942, she joined the Ministry of Food, initially working in Lincoln. That year, she married Charles Patten, known as Bob, who was serving nearby with the Royal Air Force. A fruit importer after the war, he died in 1997.
Survivors include their daughter, Judith; a sister, Elizabeth; two step-grandchildren; and a great-grandson.
The ministry later posted Ms. Patten to the East End of London and to its bureau at Harrods department store, which had a kitchen that allowed her to give cooking demonstrations.
After the war, she demonstrated appliances for Harrods, which published her first cookbook, “Recipes by Harrods,” in 1947. Many more followed, including one of the first British cookbooks to use color, “Cookery in Colour: A Picture Encyclopedia for Every Occasion,” which was published in 1960 and eventually sold two million copies.
Most of her books were aimed at ordinary cooks with minimal skills in the kitchen, as their titles suggest: “Marguerite Patten’s Family Cookbook,” “The How-To Cookbook,” “Classic Dishes Made Simple.”
“I believe that my audience is those who must cook but don’t necessarily like doing it,” The Daily Telegraph quoted her as saying in its obituary. “They want positive, straightforward advice, a feeling that someone understands they would like to cook and serve delicious food but it is a task.”
Ms. Patten made her first television appearance in 1947, demonstrating an eight-minute recipe for doughnuts on the BBC television program “Designed for Women,” where she remained the resident chef until the 1960s.
In the 1980s and after, nostalgia for the war years and ration-book cuisine inspired such collections as “Victory Cookbook: Nostalgic Food and Facts from 1940-1954,” “Marguerite Patten’s Post-War Kitchen,” “We’ll Eat Again: A Collection of Recipes from the War Years” and, most improbable of all, “Spam: The Cookbook.”
“The war taught us to manage with rations, not only not to waste but to be thrifty,” she told The Daily Telegraph in 2011. “I’d like us to go back to the common sense of war years, being clever about using up food.”
- http://bit.ly/1QqtrYC
Niciun comentariu:
Trimiteți un comentariu