Problem Cooking: Commune with the 1960s' biggest problem cook, Fanny Cradock
Can you still enjoy a recipe written by someone who leaves a bad taste in your mouth?
Fanny Cradock was a force to be reckoned with, and she knew it. Beautiful and terrible as the dawn, her BBC Christmas special is not to be missed. The sophistication of the art direction will shock you — because it’s not at all sophisticated by today’s standards. The table is spread with holiday calico yardage; the butter is dyed a childish, minty green; a holly sprig stands pitifully stuck in a pudding like a sapling in a pile of dung. Cradock begins by decorating a Charlie Brown tree with cheap, crumpled tinsel with all the warmth and joy of Maleficent painting a shed. She works against the seamless purgatory of a generic TV studio background with frightening expediency, ordering her silent assistant like a queen to her serf, which is exactly what was happening. Her eyebrows are at once menacing and completely absent.
It is riveting.
The first comment on the YouTube video linked above calls her “magnificent and terrifying”, and I can think of no more accurate description. She was respected, feared, beloved…until she shamed an award-winning home cook on national television so scathingly, so heartlessly, that the country turned on her in an instant.
After discovering her greatness, and her fall from it, I found a copy of the 1967 BBC Studios booklet summarizing her 5-part series on dealing with common issues for home cooks: cake baking, using up savory leftovers, using up sweet leftovers, proper meat cuts, and (my favorite) gelatine.
After reading it, I located within myself respect for her respect for the craft. This tiny book is full of actually useful tips. It’s fussy through the lens of the 21st century, yes. It expects you to be open to deep frying for a weeknight supper, to have somewhat specialized equipment like trussing needles or piping bags, and to spend several hours making beef knuckle aspic from scratch.
Take a closer look at it and her TV program, though, and you’ll see admirable and inventive thrift as she re-uses tinfoil and stale bread. She offers multiple options for substitutions and variations so that one recipe becomes three. And many of the tips are basic formulas so that the home cook can use common pantry ingredients as they wish, successfully, without trying to follow a complicated recipe with ingredients they don’t have. If you follow her tips and ratios, your cakes won’t fall, your sauces won’t split, and your gelatin molds won’t have an embarrassing fruit crust.
I think that’s why her fall from grace happened, actually; her obvious disdain on that primordial reality show for excellent home cooking was, in fact, off-brand for her. She had spent decades elevating creative culinary adventures of the British home cook, encouraging practicality, and here she was, practically gagging at the thought of coffee cream after duck. “So very uncouth”, her eyebrows seem to laugh derisively. As you can see from the video, she even sneers it out loud, that “you can forget home cooking in a professional kitchen.” Suddenly, the entire country understood that she had always been dismissive of the home cook and abusive to kitchen staff. She never worked in television again, and rightly so I’m sad to say.
So can I, in good conscience, make a recipe of hers and enjoy it? I’m inspired by a column of The Everywhereist’s in which she made the cinnamon rolls Mario Batali inappropriately included with his harassment apology letter, with appropriate and hilarious fury, so let’s find out. I’ve chosen Cradock’s 5 minute Saucepan Cake. I’m intrigued by the idea of a no-bake cake made from broken cookies that’s ready in a flash, and really won over by the method of pressing it into shape with cut citrus. Can something so simple really be good, or will I just be disturbed?
BBC Fanny would approve, and perhaps real Fanny would not, but I’m using what I have on hand, which is 4 oz. of graham crackers, maple syrup and a loaf pan instead of 8 oz of butter cookies, golden syrup and a big springform pan.
It worked perfectly well, although it’s worth noting I didn’t use all of the crumbs, and it really was ready in 5 minutes. The citrus press is genius — you’d never know what was in it if you didn’t make it, and her description of it as a bamboozling bite is not amiss. It’s more a cookie bar than a cake, but it’s delicious, and it sliced well with a long, sharp knife. If you want to make fancy petits fours out of it, I’d use extra chocolate and pop in the freezer for a few minutes before cutting. If you try and it and it crumbles on you anyway, a tablespoon or two of the remains in yogurt would be a real delight.
I’m glad I made it. It’s cheap, easy, versatile, and delicious, and I believe in Fanny’s stated food ideals…even if she did not.