Tea With Mrs. Beeton: Teatime Treats

by Isabella Beeton

This book features a selection of teatime ideas, such as Mrs Beeton's special cream tea, high tea for hungry travellers, warming winter teas and picnic teas. The book includes advice on how to make a good cup of tea, recipes for cakes, biscuits, scones and sandwiches as well as suggestions on decorating the tea table. This series of "Mrs Beeton books" contains both fragments from Mrs Beeton's original edition of "Cookery and Household Management" and more modern ideas for cooking and presenting meals.

Genres: Nonfiction, Cookbooks

48 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Isabella Mary Beeton (née Mayson), universally known as Mrs Beeton, was the English author of Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, and is one of the most famous cookery writers.

Popularly known as "Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management", it was a guide to running a Victorian household, with advice on fashion, childcare, animal husbandry, poisons, the management of servants, science, religion, and industrialism.

Of the 1,112 pages, over 900 contained recipes, such that another popular name for the volume is "Mrs Beeton's Cookbook". Most of the recipes were illustrated with coloured engravings, and it was the first book to show recipes in a format that is still used today. It is said that many of the recipes were actually plagiarised from earlier writers (including Eliza Acton), but the Beetons never claimed that the book's contents were original. It was intended as a guide of reliable information for the aspirant middle classes. Mrs Beeton is perhaps described better as its compiler and editor than as its author, many of the passages clearly being not her own words.