The Wind in the Willows Country Cookbook: Inspired by The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

by Arabella Boxer, Kenneth Grahame, Ernest H. Shepard (Illustrator)

Includes more than one hundred easy-to-follow recipes for a variety of dishes, for all kinds of occasions, inspired by characters and events in "The Wind in the Willows."

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Fiction

117 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Arabella Boxer first began writing for Vogue in 1966, taking over from Robert Carrier, and established a new approach to cooking as a simple and pleasurable experience. Her first book, First Slice Your Cookbook, ingeniously designed by her husband Mark, was a huge success and she has since published 10 books, including Arabella Boxer's Garden Cookbook and The Sunday Times Complete Cookbook. She has also been twice winner of the Glenfiddich Award for Food Writer of the Year.

Reviews

[Miranda Reads · Rating 2 out of 5]

"A selection of mouth-watering recipes inspired by Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows..."

Note the "inspired" from above (emphasis mine). That's going to be pretty key.

Alrighty, as you know, I'm a pretty big literary cookbook fan. If there's a cookbook based on a book, you can bet your bottom dollar that I'm going to buy myself a copy.

I'm going to start by going over the recipes, followed by an analysis of the literary connection and overall usefulness of the cookbook.

This cookbook was published in 1983 and as best as I can tell, it was never republished. Given its rarity, I will list all of the recipes below for the curious cookbook enthusiast as well as explanations if the recipe isn't intuitive.

The Recipes

Food for Staying at Home -- these are simple foods that should be easy to make at home with a normal pantry of ingredients.

--Eggy Bread (variation on French toast)
--Fried Marmalade Sandwiches (like grilled cheese but with marmalade)
--Fried Cheese Sandwiches
--Sardines on Toast (just...whole sardines (head + tail) on toast)
--Mushrooms on Toast (a mushroom gravy on toast)
--Cinnamon Toast
--All-Bran Toast (a variation of raisin bread)
--Scrambles Eggs with Tomato Puree
--Baked Eggs with Cheese and Ham (in a dish, layer bread, ham, cheese and crack eggs on top, bake)
--Curried Eggs (boiled eggs, cut in half and placed in a curry sauce)
--Egg Salad
--Cauliflower Gratin
--Toad-in-a-Bad-Hole (sausages in a yorkshire pudding batter)
--Wayfarer's Easy Pizza (homemade pizza)
--Macaroni Cheese (with bacon! ...and tomatoes..)
--Fish Pie (potatoes and fish in a pie crust)
--Kedgeree (rice, smoked fish, eggs and cream)
--Herrings in Oatmeal (literally...fish with oatmeal and lemon)
--Smoked Haddock (or Cod) with Tomatoes
--Leek Pudding (pastry with a leek filling, covered with cloth and placed in boiling water)
--Boiled Ham with Parsley Sauce
--Potato Cake (potato pancakes)
--Bubble and Squeak (mashed potatoes and cabbage)
--Easy Banana Pudding (bananas covered with syrup and fruit juices)
--Mixed Fruit Fool (fruit smoothie with rhubarb)
--Pancakes
--Jam Roly-Poly
--Apple Snow (whipped egg whites folded in with baked apple puree)

Food For Staying in Bed - these are specifically foods for the bedridden and ill - so lots of fluids, easy-to-digest, and bland items.

--Chicken Noodle Soup (includes instructions for homemade stock)
--Potato Soup
--Moly's Marmite Soldiers
--A Simple Rice Pudding (rice, sugar, butter and milk)
--Sliced Bananas in Orange Gelatin (exactly as title describes)
--Milk Shake Ripple (milk shake with a raw eggs mixed in)
--Eggnog (homemade with a raw egg)
--Honey and Lemon Drink (with optional whiskey)
--Lemonade (prepared cold)
--Lemonade II (prepared hot)

Food for the Storage Cupboard - this section's recipes are meant to be used for days when you want to prepare the larder for the upcoming winter. To store excess produce or meat for later.

--Ratty's Potted Meat (a way of preserving meat - cooking it down, reducing to a paste and using it on bread)
--Potted Fish (similar as above, but with fish)
--Kipper Paste (similar as above, using kippers)
--Marseilles Potted Shrimp (but this time with shrimp)
--Pickled Onions
--Nutty Spice Island Mixture (mixture with sesame seeds, hazelnuts, and spices)
--Tomato Chutney (tomatoes, apples, onions, raisins and spices)
--By-ways Blackberry Jelly (made with apples and blackberries)
--Crab Apple Jelly
--Plum Jam
--Frozen Milky Way
--Chocolate Chip Cookies
--Refrigerator Cookies (shape sugar cookie dough into a log, chill in fridge and cut into circles to bake)

Food for Excursions - These foods are ones that are easily made and carried with you.

--Riverside Sandwich (cream cheese, marmite, veggies)
--Sausage Sandwich (pork dinner sausage cut in half with butter and mustard)
--Potted Shrimp Sandwich (just, the potted shrimp from earlier on bread)
--Toad Hall Steak Sandwich (sirloin steak, French bread and watercress)
--Stuffed Eggs (a take on deviled eggs but you put the egg white halves back together)
--River-Banker's Lunch (Bread, butter, cheese and tomato chutney)
--Hard-Cooked Eggs with Nutty Spice Island Mixture (dip boiled eggs into the mixture)
--Sausage Rolls (sausages wrapped in pie crust, kind of like pigs in a blanket)
--Leafy Summer Lettuce Snacks (roll sausages or chicken legs in lettuce with a bit of mustard or chutney)
--Cornish Pasties (steak, potatoes, onion and spices inside a pocket of pie dough)
--Hot Meat Pasties (with carrots, onions, and ground beef)
--Rabbit Pasties (yes, using a rabbit this time)
--Easy Meat Loaf (ground beef, canned tomatoes, seasonings)
--Very Easy Flapjacks (adds in rice krispies or corn flakes, with chopped nuts)
--Flapjacks (with oats)

Food for Celebrations

--Cauliflower, Egg, and Shrimp Mayonnaise (mix it together to make a sort of...salad? appetizer?)
--Egg in Onion Sauce (make an onion sauce, fold in eggs)
--Raw Vegetables in Dipping Sauce
--Veal Stroganoff
--Red Lion Spare Ribs with Barbecue Sauce (pork spare ribs with a homemade BBQ sauce)
--River-Banker's Broiled Chicken (chicken, dijon mustard, olive oil and lemon juice)
--Chicken Pie
--Steak and Kidney Pie
--Game Pie
--Salmon Fish Cakes (salmon mixed with mashed potatoes and seasonings, dipped in bread crumbs and fried)
--Potato Puree (mashed potatoes)
--Snowfalls in Dark Woods (make a simple cake with eggs, sugar and chocolate. top with whipped cream and grated chocolate)
--Millionaire's Bread and Butter Pudding (bread pudding with raisins)
--Apples with Chocolate (cook apples with sugar, cover with whipped cream and chocolate)
--Baked Bananas (Bananas with orange and lemon juice, sprinkled with sugar and baked)
--Cheesecake
--Toad Hall Trifle (layered fruity dessert with stale cake and custard)
--Plum Crumble
--Blackberry and Apple Meringue (cooked blackberry and apple, covered with cream)
--Pebbles in a Stream (peeled grapes suspended in a lemon jelly)
--Floating Islands (poached meringues in custard sauce)
--Frozen Strawberry Fool (kind of like ice cream)
--Buried Strawberries (strawberries buried in whipped egg whites and whipped cream)
--Vanilla Ice Cream
--Pearly Dawn Sorbet (grapefruit sorbet)
--Nut Grove Ice Cream (ice cream from scratch, flavored with toasted nuts and vanilla)
--Raspberry Sauce
--Melted Milky Way Sauce (using the candy bars)
--Oh My! Toffee Sauce (homemade toffee sauce)
--Hot Chocolate Sauce
--Drop Cookies (simple cookies, using brown sugar)
--Bottled Sunshine Orange Cakes
--Small Chocolate Cakes
--Plum Cake (with currants, almonds, raisins and spices)
--Carrot Cake (with cream cheese frosting)

Cookbook Analysis

The Positives

Throughout the book, we did get quotes from the original story (that sometimes (ok, rarely) related to the recipes) but I did like the tie-in to the original story. Also, the inclusion of the line-art illustrations was really cute.

The recipes themselves - well some were fun, some were quirky and some I would not be touching with a ten foot pole - but overall, they had cute niche British cookbook vibes.

The Not-So-Positives

The Organization of Recipes

The organization of the recipes within the major sections was a nightmare. This is the 1980s. We know how to put a cookbook together by now... yet this was an absolute mess.

The foods are divided by ones you make at home, for staying in bed, that can be stored, for picnics, and finally celebrations. It's weird but I also kind of get it - there's portions of the Wind in the Willows book where Toad is forced to stay in, Mole and Ratty go for picnics, etc.

I truly don't understand the logic for the distribution of the cookbook recipes.

If you look at "food for staying at home" - there's eggy bread (French toast), fried cheese sandwiches, baked eggs with cheese and ham, macaroni cheese, and pancakes. That's breakfast, lunch, breakfast, lunch, breakfast.

Why? Just why? If you are going to make it random, why not just alphabetize the recipes?

The Literary Connection

The connection to literature was pretty much nonexistent. In my perfect world, there would always be a 1:1 ratio between recipes and the source material.

However, sometimes the original books don't have enough recipes mentioned so the author has to take some liberties. I can kind of get behind that IF the author shows why they chose the recipes and there's evidence of care being put into the cookbook.

(there was no evidence of that)

The author just puts in the recipe title, ingredients, and instructions.

For the more obscure recipes (i.e. Snowfalls in Dark Woods or Stuffed Eggs), I would have to piece together what the recipe was supposed to be from context clues in the instruction section.

I have no idea why we have Pearly Dawn Sherbert and Potted Meat and Tomato Chutney and Sliced Bananas in Orange Gelatin and Egg in Onion Sauce included under the same cookbook.

My best guess is that they were all British recipes from the 1980s but the author never really makes that clear.

Overall Thoughts

This cookbook had so much potential but it fell just so incredibly short for me.

The best part were the pictures...which were lifted from the original book.

[Manybooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pretty well a major reading disappointment with regard to Arabella Boxer’s The Wind in the Willows Country Cookbook: Inspired by The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame being a so-called literary cookbook! For while the very many featured recipes do all and sundry look appealing enough ingredients and likely also resulting taste wise (albeit that there are sadly no included photographs of the end products, of what the prepared meals are supposed to look like) and that I am in fact and indeed even rather keen on trying to prepare some of them in the near future (as the recipes do seem to be like the typical English country cooking fare, for which I have always had a major faiblesse), aside from a few black and white illustrations of Toad, Rat and the gang and some minor select quotes from The Wind in the Willows, sorry, but there is in my humble opinion no real and delightful feeling for and of the time and place of The Wind in the Willows novel and storyline even remotely being captured by Arabella Boxer.

And yes indeed, this has certainly and also completely left me with the distinct feeling that while The Wind in the Willows Country Cookbook: Inspired by The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame might be (and actually is) a decent enough (but also not yet extraordinary) English country cookery tome, it also at least to and for me does not ever feel as being truly inspired by The Wind in the Willows and by Kenneth Grahame (and yes, with the The Wind in the Willows quotes and the illustrations also thus rather seeming more like a tacked on and artificial afterthought), so that as a literary cookbook, The Wind in the Willows Country Cookbook: Inspired by The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame has been pretty much a dismal failure for me both personally and intellectually (and yes, even though I do think that many of the featured recipes would certainly make tasty meals, I for one would only recommend The Wind in the Willows Country Cookbook: Inspired by The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame with major caveats and yes, solely for its recipes and not AT ALL its supposed literary The Wind in the Willows magic).