When the women prep the food and discuss ingredients with final touches, you can visualize it on a tray with its tasty aroma filling the house. The atmosphere of the cookery evokes your senses of taste and smell. When Eliza savors the six course French dinner, she eats it so slowly devouring its intricacies and complexities to a point that you want to grab that food and taste it yourself. The friendship between two women makes you want to join them in their endeavors. Told through the alternating perspectives of the two women, The Language of Food draws on fact and imagination as Eliza and Ann develop what will eventually be “the greatest British cookbook of all time”, published in 1845 as ‘Modern Cookery, in All Its Branches: Reduced to a System of Easy Practice, for the Use of Private Families’. It’s also a story of female friendship and fortitude, as the women, despite their different stations in life, work side by side, and a story of creativity and cooking as Eliza and Ann combine their talents for poetry and instinct for flavours. The story is told through two perspectives, Eliza, born into a wealthy family who then loses it all and Anne, born into poverty with an alcoholic father and a Mother who has succumbed to dementia at an early age. The two meet when Eliza and her mother open a boardinghouse where Ann comes to work. Culinary enthusiast, and fans of strong historical female characters will not want to miss this one! Overall, the novel is extremely accomplished, the plot unfolds organically and it’s very hard to put down. It conveys really well just how important Eliza Acton is in the cookery world and how much is owed to her. I applaud the author for creating such a marvellous novel without a huge amount of evidence to go on. Highly recommended for fans of historical fiction or those who love food!!

Overall, this is a lovely story of two very different women, from very different walks of life, coming together to create something worthwhile and helpful to generations of cooks who have benefitted from Eliza’s organization and instructions on not only the proper ingredients, but the steps needed to make the dishes a success. This format is still widely utilized today and has influenced several high-profile chefs over the years. This reminds me of an upstairs, downstairs type of book. Very interesting and informative book that I enjoyed a lot. Interesting but even book that would be better as a magazine long-read. Why do menus or TV ads always use buzzwords to make foods sound better (juicy cuts of steak, fresh vegetables, locally-sourced products, etc.)? What's the origins of ketchup? Why do we propose a toast?There isn't a lot here that really couldn't have been condensed into a magazine long-read. And it could have been edited much better. As noted elsewhere, "San Francisco" is misspelled (with another "s" vs. a "c" in the middle). His wife Janet is mentioned but it's not clear who she is at the first mention and seems like a rando name dropped into the text. The writing seems disjointed and while some of the information is really interesting (the origins of ketchup) the writing really isn't very good. It almost feels like more than one hand wrote this and everything was combined together in a sloppy effort to make a coherent narrative. This is a book about food, so if course there is plenty of it—I loved the process of Eliza working on recipes, testing them out—sometimes on their own, while at others for guests at the boarding house—and how she works at writing them as well. Ann might start out as a maid but soon proves that she can be more in terms of giving her inputs on flavours and even adding her own little touches—something Eliza appreciates. It was interesting to see how Eliza brought about such a revolution in the way cookbooks were written, and was able to, through her poetic writing, take them to a different level. In fact, that poetic approach to and appreciation of different ingredients and tastes comes through in this book as well. For those interested, the author has included a few of the recipes at the end.

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below. The Language of Food by Annabel Abbs is definitely a book to savour, but be prepared to salivate as you visualise and imagine the dishes being tested, prepared and devoured. Abbs provides phrases to roll around your tongue and plenty of description so you can immerse yourself in the sensual writing and imagine yourself in the character's shoes. I particularly related to Ann Kirby, and enjoyed this section describing the first three days of her employment by Miss Eliza Acton: Eliza Acton’s original plan to become a poet came to an abrupt halt when a publisher dismissed her work and then had the audacity to suggest she write a cookery book. To make matters worse, her father suffered a reversal of fortune, prompting him to leave the country. Eliza, with limited options, reconsidered the publisher’s suggestion that she write a recipe book.I enjoyed reading about Eliza and how she got to to be a cook in the first place. She has to suffer many humiliations along the way and her father is bankrupt putting more pressure on the family. Eliza want to be a poet but is instead asked to write a cookery book for women. She is offended and doesn’t really know much about cookery but she gets an assistant in Ann who is 17 and caring for her parents She does want to be a cook and together the two of them cook up something (sorry not sorry) quite remarkable. This was the part of the story that I particularly enjoyed -seeing them try and fail, try something else, tinker with an idea and then come to a solution. It’s quite brilliant when you realise what they were up against and the time in history we are talking about. Exhilarating to read - thoughtful, heart-warming and poignant, with a quiet intelligence and elegance that does its heroine proud’ Bridget Collins The fascinating journey through The Language of Food uncovers a global atlas of culinary influences. With Jurafsky's insight, words like ketchup, macaron, and even salad become living fossils that contain the patterns of early global exploration that predate our modern fusion-filled world. This is a collection of articles on language relating to food. It's a mixed bag. There is a lot about etymology and word origins (Why do we "toast" someone or something when drinking? Are macaroons and macarons related, and do macaroni have anything to do with either of them?). This was ok, if not particularly captivating. I was much more interested in the chapter on the language used in menus and how it varies depending on the price point of the restaurant. That was actually quite fascinating, and there's a related chapter that looks at a similar thing in bags of crisps. I also liked the chapter on the phonetics of different foods and how different types of sounds suggest different qualities in the foods (crispy and crunchy? Soft and pillowy?).