Cooks can still learn from Fanny Cradock

sir – I first came across Fanny Cradock through her Bon Viveur column in The Daily Telegraph (“Is the nation finally ready to forgive Fanny?”, Features, March 23).

I subsequently bought her cookery books and found the advice in them most helpful. I have never forgotten her dictum that if a pancake is thick enough to toss, the only place to toss it is in the dustbin. Like all of us, she had her faults, but she certainly encouraged me to cook new dishes.

Adele Epstein

London N3 sir – Would Fanny Cradock seek forgiveness? As I fondly recall, she never doubted her infallibility – an inspiration to the weaker-willed and downtrodden of her day.

Her demise as a television personality may have been the fault of her husband Johnnie (a martyr to his wife’s waspishness) – in particular, his observation at the close of a Christmas show one year that he hoped every viewer’s doughnut rings turned out like Fanny’s.

Edward Dunleavy

Chesterfield, Derbyshire