Hamlyn All Colour Cook Book

by Mary Berry

Hamlyn All Colour Cook Book (Hamlyn All Colour Cookbook) [Hardcover] Mary Berry; Ann Body and Audrey Ellis

Genres: Cookbooks, Nonfiction, Reference

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

There are multiple authors in the Goodreads database with this name.

Mary Berry is an English food writer and television presenter. After being encouraged in domestic science classes at school, she went to college to study catering. She then moved to France at the age of 21 to study at Le Cordon Bleu school, before working in a number of cooking-related jobs.

She has published more than seventy cookery books (her first being The Hamlyn All Colour Cookbook in 1970) and hosted several television series for the BBC and Thames Television. Berry is an occasional contributor to Woman's Hour and Saturday Kitchen. She has been a judge on the BBC One (originally BBC Two) television programme The Great British Bake Off since its launch in 2010.

Reviews

[Kacey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gorgeously 70s, everything about this book screams 1970s. And yet, tucked away between the aspic jellies and the devilled eggs are some absolute gems of recipes. A wonderful book if you want to explore some of the less common cuts of meat or fish around, or try some combinations that are both delicious and low cost. If you want to host a retro dinner party, this is your bible!

[Jules · Rating 3 out of 5]

In all honesty, I probably wouldn't make any recipes from this particular cookbook these days, as it is a little dated, but I was given it for my birthday from my grandma and grandad 17 years ago, so it's a cookbook I've held on to.

[Peter Castine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sorry if my overall rating annoys people with fond memories of the book. But…

For nostalgia, give it five stars.
For *ideas* with lots of tasty meals, snacks, and desserts… four and a half (maybe even five).
As a practical instructional collection of recipes to make in the 2020s… two stars, tops. Part of that equation is that I'm not making the recipes in the UK, the country for which the book was intended (not really the book's fault, nor its authors', but an impact on the usability of the recipes for me).

When the book first came out, having pictures of what the recipes look like was something of a major innovation (I have other cookbooks from the period that were text only, and unless they provided a lot of detail, it could be tricky to get anything like desired results). But the details are the first problem in actually using the recipes, and I've had to figure out a lot of things that were silently assumed (oh, aspic should be made up the night before; that sort of thing). And, compared to YouTube videos showing you how a recipe is made, no comparison.

I should note that the book was given to us in the 1970s as an anniversary present by my parents-in-law, and I think part of the motivation was so we could make "real English cooking" in Germany, where we live. But availability of ingredients (or finding appropriate substitutes) has been a big frustration. I think even in the UK, nowadays it would be hard to find "Hot Toast Savoury"; Bisto is (I think) still a thing but figuring out what it is took a while (oh! we could use Maggi Fix or something like that—_or just make up gravy from scratch, that's not hard_). Several recipes use the trick of taking frozen orange juice concentrate and using it undiluted… we could get OJ concentrate for a short period 40 years ago, but it's been off the shelves since; yes, I can reduce bottled OJ, but it adds an hour or so to prep time. And so on.

Unit conversion is sometimes trickier than it needs to be—Imperial pints to metric isn't hard, but "¾ pint less 5 tablespoons," particularly if you're simultaneously adjusting for a different-sized baking tin needing 33% more batter, well, it's easy to make a mistake. (Later editions were more helpful in that metric units were included in the recipe text, so less flipping to the conversion tables to check amounts; but they still had oddball "450 ml less xyz tablespoons" amounts instead of the actual milliliter amount, which is what the cook needs at the end of the day). The other tricky unit is oven temperature, modern ovens are more efficient and use much lower temperatures (particularly with convection). I had a few batches of cookies burned to cinder before I caught on to that.

Even at the time the book came out, the "Index" wasn't very helpful, and the chapter organization was erratic (basically each of the three authors contributed whole chapters, so if you're looking for, say, something with pork, the recipes can be spread around several different chapters, even though there is one specific chapter for "Pork and Lamb." If you can remember the exact name of the recipe you want, the index will give you a recipe number, but otherwise you'll need to flip through a lot of pages. (This is alleviated by the copy of the book available on the "WayBack Machine" aka archive-dot-org, which allows full-text search, something that's save me a lot of time.)

The positive side is that with some imagination and ideas for how to flesh out details, it's possible to make some really nice meals from the ideas given. But it can be frustrating.

[Linda Doughty · Rating 5 out of 5]

My mother bought this cookery book, when I was a child & she cooked loads of it's recipes for our family. So when I left home, I had to get myself a copy too.

I've always loved it's recipes & it's terrific illustrations & I still use this cookery book. As it's always been one of my favourite cookery books, full of interesting, tasty, tried, tested & full proof recipes.

[Carl Kruse · Rating 3 out of 5]

A classic, in that we still talk about it today, though not the first, or second book, I would turn to for a recipe today.

[Jane Ostler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bought when still at school, this book came in handy when planning family meals.