Miss Eliza's English Kitchen Quotes

“He proceeds to tell me about blends of curry powders, the benefits of fresh spices, the tamarinds he is now importing in the shell. I am so absorbed I forget the kitchen---and my unfeminine blunders---entirely. He describes the smoky flavor of cumin, the black bitterness of fenugreek seeds, the sweet richness of fresh coconut flesh, the fierce blast of fresh ginger root.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“I have started to see poetry in the strangest of things: from the roughest nub of nutmeg to the pale parsnip seamed with soil. And this has made me wonder if I can write a cookery book that includes the truth and beauty of poetry. Why should the culinary arts not include poetry? Why should a recipe book not be a thing of beauty?
My thoughts come quickly and smoothly in the solitude of the kitchen, and as I beat the eggs I find myself comparing the process of following a recipe to that of writing a poem. Fruit, herbs, spices, eggs, cream: these are my words and I must combine them in such a way they produce something to delight the palate. Exactly as a poem should fall upon the ears of its readers, charming or moving them. I must coax the flavors from my ingredients, as a poet coaxes mood and meaning from his words.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“And it seems to me that the kitchen, with it’s natural intimacy, is more conducive to friendship and love than any other room in the house.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“Nothing is as nutritious or wholesome as proper food cooked in the kitchen” - Eliza Acton”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“All of a sudden I am seven years of age again. Mam is lifting quince pips with a tin skimmer. She chops the flesh and gives me the cores that I may suck at the golden clinging fruit, which is melting soft, sweet, perfumed, and slips down my throat like cream.
"My mother always left the quinces in their liquor overnight," I say tentatively. "With the pips and cores. She said it set firmer and faster like that.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“I go to the larder for the quinces and stop in amazement. For the larder is brimming over with food. Baskets of field mushrooms. Trugs of green apples and yellow pears. A metal bath containing two pink crabs. Slabs of newly churned butter as bright as a dandelion flower. Wheels of pale yellow cheese the size of my head. An earthenware bowl of cobnuts. A ham soaking in a pail of water.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“I can feel Mother's furious eyes upon me, but the tug of the kitchen is stronger: my new books, the fresh perch gleaming in the larder, the trugs of field mushrooms and damsons and pippin apples still with the dew upon them, the curly green parsley I shall fry until crisp...”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“After that, we don't talk much until she brings out a ginger cake from the larder.
"An old family recipe," she says. "I've been experimenting with the quantities of cloves and Jamaica ginger. Tell me what you think." And she pushes a slice toward me. I try not to gobble for it, for I am starving.
"The most important thing with this cake is to beat in every ingredient, one by one, with the back of a wooden spoon," she says. "Simply throwing everything in together and then beating produces a most unsuccessful cake. I know because my first attempt was as heavy as a brick---quite indigestible!" She gives a rueful smile and asks if I think it needs more ginger.
I feel the crumb, dense and dark, melt on my tongue. My mouth floods with warmth and spice and sweetness. As I swallow, something sharp and clean seems to lift through my nose and throat until my head swims.
"I can see you like it." Miss Eliza watches me and smiles.
And then I blurt something out. Something I know Reverend Thorpe and his wife would not like. But it's too late, the words jump from my throat of their own accord. "I can taste an African heaven, a forest full of dark earth and heat."
The smile on Miss Eliza's face stretches a little wider and her eyes grow brighter. And this gives me the courage to ask a question that's nothing to do with my work. "What is the flavor that cuts through it so keenly, so that it sings a high note on my tongue?"
She stares at me with her forget-me-not eyes. "It's the lightly grated rinds of two fresh lemons!”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“Como el poema, la receta debe ser clara, precisa, ordenada. Nada difuso ni soso ni inexacto.”
― Annabel Abbs, El libro de cocina de la señorita Eliza

“«demasiado afán de reconocimiento, demasiada ambición, ningún sentido del decoro...».”
― Annabel Abbs, El libro de cocina de la señorita Eliza

“I try to picture myself with a boisterous brood of children, but the picture in my mind's eye is a watercolour and will not hold, the colours bleeding and fading.”
― Annabel Abbs, The Language of Food

“– Un buon piatto è in grado di fermare il tempo, eh?

Mi lascio sfuggire un piccolo sospiro, e lui sembra capire, perché mi chiede un po’ corrucciato: – Non siete riuscita a… a concentrarvi sui miei sapori? Non avete potuto mugolare per la gioia di quel momento? Godere di quel brivido di piacere sulla lingua?

Rido. – Le vostre salse erano davvero buone.

Scuote la testa con tanto vigore che dai capelli gli schizzano gocce di sudore. – No, no! Non «buone». Erano divine. Avevano ritmo, equilibrio. Come la musica. Come la migliore musica.

Penso a come i sapori si erano dispiegati nella mia bocca uno dopo l’altro, e ognuno aveva evocato una scena, un’immagine, un ricordo che mi aveva fatto viaggiare avanti e indietro nel mio passato. [...]

– Assaggiando le mie salse si ha l’impressione di succhiare la vita fino al midollo, eh? [...]

– Voi inglesi avete soltanto una salsina. Il burro. Sempre burro. Io invece ne ho diverse. E tutte riescono a fermare il tempo tanto che per qualche istante ti sembra di vivere davvero per la prima volta dentro il tuo corpo e la tua anima –. Si ferma e si batte un pugno sul petto. – Questa è la mia arte. Regalare la gioia e la vita, anche quando la Morte stessa allarga le sue fauci.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“Mia madre mi ha detto come fare la padrona di casa, spiegandomi che devo attribuirmi la responsabilità della buona riuscita dei piatti, ma senza ammettere di averli cucinati io e senza mostrare un entusiasmo eccessivo che rivelerebbe «appetiti fuori luogo». Mi ha anche proibito di parlare di poesia, se non per dire che la leggo e mi piace. E il libro di cucina? Non devo farne parola, cosí mi ha intimato minacciosa, aggiungendo che nessun uomo vuole sposare una donna che «venera l’ambizione come qualcosa di sacro». – Ma cosí come facciamo a parlare? – le ho chiesto io di rimando, con sarcasmo.
– Esprimi interesse per la sua attività, – mi ha risposto. – Non dovrebbe essere troppo difficile.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“Ripenso al caffè di Miss Eliza. E mentre assaporo di nuovo quel gusto che ancora indugia sulla mia lingua, mi torna il buon umore. Jack si sbagliava quando ha detto che Dio si trova in una crosta di pane. Forse è blasfemo pensarlo, ma secondo me Dio si trova in un sorso di caffè.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“Quanto è strano questo mondo, dove a una donna non è concesso di indulgere nei piaceri della tavola. Certo, è suo compito imbandirla. Ma senza rivelare emozioni. E sí, deve pur mangiare – per vivere, se non altro –, ma senza far vedere che la cosa le procura piacere. Per noi esponenti del gentil sesso il cibo deve essere qualcosa di meramente funzionale.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“Mrs. Thorp has a bosom so ample you could trot a mouse on it.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“I worked on a new dish while you were away. A pudding." She ties her apron tight around her waist. "Milk, cream, vanilla, eggs, and sugar."
"Oh," I say, slightly unsettled at the jauntiness of her tone, at its certainty. "A custard? Did it curdle?"
She ignores my question and tells me that she garnished her pudding with branches of preserved barberries. She asks if I would like to see it. But before I can answer she scuttles to the pantry, returning with a clean pudding cloth over one arm, and my best platter----on which wobbles a custard as large and pale as a harvest moon. Atop are woven branches of barberries that wink like garnets. For a second I am speechless. Her creation---for it is nothing less---is picture-perfect.
She offers me an egg spoon and jabs at the platter. "Go on, Miss Eliza. I saved it for you to taste first."
I dip the spoon into the custard's wrinkled rind and lift it swiftly, curiously, to my lips. As I do so, I'm aware of a sense of serenity washing through me. My anguish over dedications, the lurking accusatory voice that lives inside my head, all of it slips away. And there is only cream and vanilla. It occurs to me that although this glorious pudding is her creation, Ann is partly my creation, and I am partly her creation. Cooking and tasting have provided their own stage and we are performing on it at this very moment.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“But then, one bright morning, I walked out through woods of pine and birch. Foxgloves and wild clematis and briar roses were bursting from the earth. Birdsong shook the air. Swifts snipped at the sky. I knew then that I must publish a collection of my poems. Not only the tragic ones but new verse, about the glory of life, the joys of solitude, the majesty of nature.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“My thoughts swerve back to swans' eggs. Such splendid things---their whites are purer, more translucent than those of any other egg. Perhaps their boiled yolks might be mixed with firm fresh butter, essence of anchovies, minced herbs, even a chopped shallot. And then returned to their hardboiled whites in softly beaten mounds. A swan's egg en salade, I think, smiling.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“When the crab arrives, I realize I've barely given any thought to Ann and her ministrations. To my surprise she has added a few finishing touches of her own. The crab sits snugly in its pink shell, beside a neat mound of delicately green mayonnaise. How has she colored it green?
"This could be made into a curry," pronounces Mr. Arnott. "In Madras, curried sea oysters are considered the pinnacle of fine food. Anything can be curried... fish, fowl, even eggs."
"Eggs?" Again, he has intrigued me.
"Indeed eggs," he says. "Hard-boiled and placed in a hot curried gravy, they are quite delicious."
I taste the mayonnaise, trying to fathom how Ann has greened it. Simultaneously I try to commit Mr. Arnott's recipe for curried eggs to memory, while also checking the seasoning in the crab.
"Do you think the crab would benefit from a little more lemon juice?" I ask. "Or perhaps chili vinegar should have been used."
"It is certainly fresh." He slowly savors the crab upon his tongue. "It tastes of the sea.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“I keep an eye out for Ann, but instead I catch sight of a hedgehog shuffling into the undergrowth---an unexpected glimpse for they are shy, nocturnal creatures. Something about his gait, his spines, makes me imagine a sweet dish in his image. A hedgehog pudding... How might I make the spikes? Slithers of blanched almonds... impaled in a stiff white icing? Browned in a hot oven to re-create his russet color? And beneath his armor of icing and almonds... a Madeira sponge? A stiff blancmange? As I ponder how to make the hedgehog's body, I notice an apple tree, its boughs stripped of fruit but for a single split pippin at its apex. An apple hedgehog! A thick puree of apples drained until almost dry... with a center of apricot jam flavored with lemons.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“The smell of bruised apples reaches me of a sudden. And in that moment I am back in Miss Eliza's kitchen, rich with cooking odors: the nutty smell of roasting coffee berries, the syrupy scent of fruit upon the stove, the pierce of a fresh-cut lemon, the sweet warmth of a split vanilla pod, the earthy heat of a crushed clove.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“My mind veers back to roasted pigeon. And from pigeon, I travel effortlessly, unrestrainedly back to France...the pots of rillettes fragrant with garlic, the boned forelegs of ham yellowed with bread crumbs, the blood puddings curled up like snakes, the terrines and pâtés, the sausages from Lyon and Arles, the jowls of salmon cooked à la génoise, the hundreds of cheeses resplendent beneath their glass bells, the perfumed melons and honeyed apricots”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“... the exotic spices arriving daily from the East Indies and the Americas, the crates of sweet oranges and bitter lemons from Sicily, the apricots from Mesopotamia, the olive oil from Naples, the almonds from the Jordan valley... I have seen and smelled these delicacies at market. But does any English person know how to cook with such foods?
I think back to my time in France and Italy, of all the delicacies that passed across my tongue. And then to the gardens I've seen in Tonbridge with their raised beds of sorrel, lettuce, cucumbers, marrows, pumpkins. Already the banks are starred bright with blackberries and rose hips, with damsons and sour sloes, the bloom still upon them. Trees are weighted down with green apples and yellow mottled pears and crab apples flushed pink and gold. Soon there will be fresh cobnuts in their husks, and ripe walnuts, and field mushrooms, and giant puffballs.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“And what of all these spices? They're worth a pretty fortune." She waves a juddering arm across the table, at the tins and glass jars and earthenware pots. All at once a shaft of thin northern light swoops over them, jolting them into luminous life: bubbled glass jars of briny green peppercorns, salted capers, gleaming vanilla pods, rusted cinnamon sticks, all leaping and glinting. The sudden startling beauty of it, the palette of hues--ocher, terra-cotta, shades of earth and sand and grass---the pale trembling light. All thoughts of running a boardinghouse vanish.
I reach for a jar, lift its cork lid. The scent of bark, earth, roots, sky. And for a second I am somewhere else. "The mysterious scent of a secret kingdom," I murmur. The jar contains little pellets, brown, spherical, unexotic. How marvelous that something so plain can have such an enthralling perfume, I think.
"Oh, Miss Eliza. Always the poetess! It's only allspice." Cook gives a wan smile and gestures at the ceiling, where long bunches of herbs hang from a rack. Rosemary, tansy, sage, nettles, woodruff. "And what of these? All summer I was collecting these and they still ain't properly dry."
"May I lower it?" Not waiting for an answer I wind down the rack until the drying herbs are directly in front of me---a farmyard sweetness, a woody sappy scent, the smell of bruised apples and ripe earth and crushed ferns.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“Pigeons wrapped in the leaves of vines. Oysters in crisp pastry cases. Whole Gloucester salmon in aspic. Yarmouth lobsters cooked in wine and herbs. Glazed tarts of pippin apples. Paper-thin layers of buttery pastry spread with greengages, apricots, peaches, cherries, served with great gouts of golden cream.
"Well," I say, "it's gruel for us tonight, with a smidgeon of salt and pepper." Whereupon he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a twist of greased paper, and opens it. Immediately I smell the tang of heather honey.
"For you, Ann." In his grimed palm sits an oozing chunk of honeycomb as big as a plover's egg.
I clap my hands in delight, my tongue waggling with greed. As we eat our gruel I make the clots of chewy wax last as long as possible, pushing them around and around my mouth, pressing them against my molars, sucking on them 'til they slip sweetly down my throat.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“What's a soufflé?" I sigh, for that is how the word sounds. Soft and sweet as a summer breeze. I repeat the word in my head: Soufflé. Soufflé.
"You beat eggs as light as air. And you make a batter of cream and butter, very fresh and the butter as bright as possible and cut very small. Then you flavor it. Master Soyer likes to use an Italian cheese or sometimes the finest bitter chocolate. And into the oven, where it rises so tall you cannot believe it. And when you bite in, it's like having cloud upon your tongue." Jack smacks his lips together.
I stir absently at the gruel and wish we had a few currants to sweeten it. And as I think of currants, all manner of other dried fruits swim before my eyes. I've seen them at market in Tonbridge. Great mounds of wizened shining prunes and raisins, orange peel crusted white with sugary syrup, rings of apple like the softest, palest leather.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen

“God, I think blasphemously, is in a sip of coffee.”
― Annabel Abbs, Miss Eliza's English Kitchen