Patience Gray Boeken

This book is perhaps the jewel in Prospect Book's crown. Within a few months of its first appearance in 1986 it was hailed as a modern classic. Fiona MacCarthy wrote in The Times that, 'the book is a large and grandiose life history, a passionate narrative of extremes of experience.'; Jeremy Round called Patience Gray 'he high priestess of cooking';, whose book pushes the form of the cookery book as far as it can go. Angela Carter remarked that it was less a cookery book that a summing-up of the genre of the late-modern British cookery book. The work has attracted a cult following in the United States, where passages have been read out at great length on the radio; and it has been anthologized by Paul Levy in The Penguin Book of Food and Drink. It was given a special award by the Andre Simon Book Prize committee in 1987.

Plats du Jour was one of Jane Grigson’s favourite books: if ever she saw one in a jumble sale she bought it to give as a present. For, as the well-known food historian, Alan Davidson, wrote, ‘it is a very good book indeed. Its principal ingredients, the knowledge and amiable enthusiasm of the authors, have given it a lasting value.’ And he pointed out that it is a very original cookery book, written in unpretentious language, in an unprescriptive, relaxed way by two cooks with whom it is easy to identify.David Gentleman believes that ‘Patience Gray and Primrose Boyd’s admirable and practical Plats du Jour [is] every bit as good as Elizabeth David’. In fact, in terms of sales and influence it was Patience Gray and Primrose Boyd who were the pioneers in introducing English cooks to French everyday cookery. Plats du Jour sold 50,000 copies in the first few months after publication and 100,000 in the next three years, an astonishing amount at the time. It was only in the 1960s that Elizabeth David started to become a symbol of the transformation of English middle-class eating habits. Before that Plats du Jour was the favourite and influential French cookery book.

"This book was written in 1964 as a manual of instruction for the cooks of the Blue Funnel Line's latest addition to its fleet, the Centaur. A cargo ship of handsome lines, equipped with every comfort, it carried 200 passengers and more than 4,000 sheep across the southern seas from Western Australia to Singapore."--Inside front cover