My most favourite reel or shorts in any social media app is the one showing someone cooking!
I love cooking and creating new stuff and these reels become more attractive especially during the meal time!
One thing to note is that most NATURAL cooks would actually not measure the ingredients and only put as per their experience! While those who make itemized or standard stuff like a conveyor belt use the exact measurements!
Even my mother who is one of the best cooks in the world when explaining the recipe to anyone else would tell to put SOME masala and a little GINGER and so on! She would not be accurate with the quantity! In our language we used to call it ALAVU! Then again this may be frustrating to many especially the novice cooks or the learners who would want the exact measurements!
Which is why many cook books are popular which gives you the exact measurement and list! But this was not the norm for many years! There was one book which started it all!
This book which is still popular was described by Bill Bryson in his book called ‘At Home: A short history of private life!’ which of course fished my interest!
The book was a literal encyclopedia on how to manage a house!
The book was called ‘Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management!’
There are many interesting trivia related to this amazing initiative but then there are also many controversies!
Originally published on October 1, 1861; it was a definitive Victorian guide to running a domestic household and a foundational milestone in culinary publishing.
Compiled by 25-year-old journalist and author Isabella Beeton, it originally appeared as a series of 24 monthly magazine installments beginning in 1859 before being bound into a single, massive volume!
While it contains roughly 1,800 recipes, it was designed as a “one-stop-shop” manual for the emerging Victorian middle class.
It famously likened the mistress of a house to the “general of an army”.
It became an immediate bestseller, selling 60,000 copies in its first year and nearly two million by 1868. It has never been out of print!
The book would also have a literal Animal Husbandry in the Kitchen!
The book was so comprehensive that it didn’t just tell you how to cook an animal; it gave detailed instructions on how to breed, feed, and slaughter them right in your own backyard!
The first bound edition in 1861 was a physical behemoth. It contained 1,112 pages, 2,751 distinct entries, and over 900 recipes, weighing down Victorian bookshelves everywhere!
It was also the First Million-Seller: It is widely considered one of the first British non-fiction books to hit a mass commercial market, selling nearly two million copies by 1868—an extraordinary feat for the era!
For many households in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Household Management was one of the most owned book in the British Empire!
The most important contribution of the book was its invention of the Modern Recipe Layout!
Before Mrs. Beeton, recipes were written as long, confusing paragraphs with ingredients mentioned randomly throughout!
She revolutionized cooking by putting the exact ingredients and precise cooking times in a neat list at the very top.
Thus it was the first major cookbook to format recipes in the structured layout we use today—listing ingredients first, followed by the exact preparation method, estimated costs, serving sizes, and seasonal availability which was a revolution of sorts!
The format continues even to this day!
You can thank Isabella Beeton for the same till I tell you about its controversies tomorrow!
Top and major and a pundit also is Hridaynath Mangeshkar ji!
Now stop wasting time with reels and sleep!
Shubh ratri…
