A new paperback edition of a wonderfully evocative cookery manual by one
of England's greatest modern food-writers. The Centaur's Kitchen had
never (before 2005) been shown to the public, except in the galleys and
state-rooms of the ships that once sailed under the ensign of the Blue
Funnel Line. It was written in 1964, at the request of the company
chairman, to better instruct their Chinese cooks in cooking fresh and
flavoursome food. In a few short chapters, Patience Gray lays out a
whole repertoire, drawn mainly from the Mediterranean and France, that
might be cooked on board ships. Her aim was to wean the cooks off
frozen, dried and packeted food and to respond to both the seasons and
the supplies available at ports of call. The style of cookery was much
as in her earlier, and first, book Plats du Jour (1957): retro to us,
bourgeois French in another form of shorthand. The style of writing is
eloquent and prescriptive: the author keen to impart good habits as well
as good cooking. Thus there are chapters about equipment and kitchen
basics as well as mere recipes. The text has been illustrated by Miranda
Gray, the author's daughter. Many of the pictures, just as the title,
draw on Greek mythology. The reason for this is the Blue Funnel Line's
custom of naming its ships for mythological figures (Centaur, Ariadne,
Neptune, etc). Other drawings evoke the author's life beside the
Mediterranean in Italy and the Greek isles.
