HOW TO JUG A HARE: THE TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE KITCHEN. Edited by Sarah Rainey.

2015 1st edition. 8vo (155 x 240mm). Ppxii,323. Foreword by Bee Wilson. Decorative, paper-covered boards, issued without dust-wrapper.

This is a fascinating collection of articles on food and cookery taken from various editions of the Telegraph over the last hundred years or so, although with a leaning towards the second half of the period. What this collection really demonstrates is the change in London journalists' attitudes towards food and the kitchen - what is really a question of husbandry and the household economy is seen by them as merely a hobby and something of a curiosity. This explains the book's leaning towards articles from more recent decades, and clarifies the incomprehension shown by the contemporary food journo faced with such things as "'Let us serve [strawberries] with cream and sugar, but let the cream be farm fresh and not that absolutely tasteless shop stuff which has to be tiddled up (otherwise all it provides is density) and let the sugar be that pale, beige, sand-textured ...sugar which anyone can get if they try.' The person reading this feels admonished. Note to self: try harder when buying cream and sugar." This is from a discussion of an article of 1970, of green memory: a sentiment repeated in some of the more recent articles discussing factory ready meals as if this had any parallel at all with Mrs Beeton or the experience to discriminate between good sugar (cream, fish, strawberries) and bad. The older articles lean towards husbandry, the more recent towards food as a pastime of the well-off urbanite. Other articles discuss social trends amongst the population at large or their era. Egon Ronay tells us, in 1957, that the "methods of the secret police of gastronomy" interested him. "The ones I met, intelligent, alert men, had formed interesting conclusions on the French travelling public and tourist. They find that as car-ownership spreads among all classes SAUCES become less important, SOLID MEAT dishes more so, LESS TIME is spent on eating and GRILLS [Ronay's capitals] are consequently popular. Young French people are more interested in food and wine than their parents were at their age. This is true in Britain too." A fascinating collection of readable newspaper feature articles which illuminates in a way which was, I am sure, quite unintended by the compilers. The domestic husbandwoman, and -man, who leans towards the earlier articles in this collection will find an extensive range of books on husbandry, domestic, sporting and horticultural, on our website.