Today’s cookbooks? We drool over the pictures then buy pizza, says Prue Leith
BOOKS by celebrity chefs are more likely to adorn the owner’s coffee table than be used in the kitchen, says Prue Leith.
The 7 -year-old judge on the BBC’s Great British Menu says modern cookery books are more concerned with style than the recipes.
Miss Leith said: ‘New cookbooks lie on the coffee table and we drool over pictures of Tuscan landscapes and rustic bread ovens... before ordering in a pizza.’
Recalling her days as a young cook, she said that cookery books ‘lived in the kitchen’ and had virtually no imagery. She told Radio Times: ‘Now, the look of the book dictates the sale. In my day you could still buy a good cookbook in paperback with no pictures at all. I doubt if that would sell today. But those books were much used: they lived in the kitchen and got splattered with custard and gravy. Today, if we cook, we Google it.’
South Africa-born Miss Leith launched her catering company in 1960, opened her Michelinstarred restaurant Leith’s at 29 and started Leiths School of Food and Wine six years later. She is currently presenting the tenth series of the BBC show Great British Menu.
Miss Leith said cookery on TV had also become more entertaining than explanatory. She added: ‘In the 1970s, most food on television came from the BBC education department and it was instructional rather than entertaining.
‘But in the 1980s, Keith Floyd leapt onto our screens. Cooking as entertainment had arrived. Jamie Oliver did the same trick at the end of the 1990s, pulling in a whole new audience.’