Cookery
'Too many cooks spoil the broth', goes a popular proverb. In other words, a
good simple idea can be ruined by too many people trying to improve
it.
Now people are saying something different: 'Too many cooks on television'.
More and more cookery programmes have been packing the TV schedules
over the last three years. We have fat ladies on motorcycles, celebrity
cookery races, workshops for reluctant cooks, Chinese chefs, Italian
chefs, punk chefs and drunken chefs. You can see the experts do everything,
from making perfect crispy duck, to searing guinea fowl in red wine
sauce, to cleaning a carburettor.
But the most popular cooking series, just before Christmas, was less
exotic. It taught Britain how to boil an egg.
Delia Smith's back-to-basics cookery series, How To Cook, certainly
didn't risk assuming too much of its audience. Delia meticulously showed
us how to recognise boiling water, for example, before making poached
eggs. It was ridiculed by other TV chefs. One rival said it was insulting,
while Egon Ronay said it was the 'missionary position' of cooking. A
satirical comedian did a spoof of a Delia programme in which 'she' explained
patiently how to make a cup of packet soup.
But we loved her programmes. Everyone is talking about her. (It's a
very unusual first name, but watch out for lots of Delias appearing
at christenings everywhere in a year or so's time. Especially if the
next series involves oysters).
The 'Delia Effect' goes far beyond food, and it tells us many things
about the whole modern British way of life. That makes it a very good
conversation-starter. Here are some ways you can talk about it, with
positive and negative things to say for each.
1. Food
'Cookery is the new rock and roll', the marketing men keep trying to
tell us. (Everything has been the 'new rock and roll'. Cookery, video
games, comedy, the Internet - even rock and roll.) In many ways this
is true. Like rock music, we confidently criticise others' work, yet
we couldn't do it ourselves. We all think we can tell quality from mediocrity,
but the mediocre always sells more. Delia's programmes show that British
food tastes are still very modestly sophisticated. Add a pinch of nutmeg
to scrambled eggs? How daring! Sprinkle a few cranberries on a turkey?
Don't tell the police! Poach eggs in water that's just below boiling
point? Technology our grandparents could only dream of!
Positive opinion: "Delia shows the strengths of traditional English
food - simple wholesome ingredients skilfully and subtly cooked."
Negative opinion: "Delia's popularity over the more exotic cookery
programmes shows how frightened we are of anything unfamiliar"
2. Family life
Delia's series was heavily advertised. The posters promised that Delia
would teach you what mummy didn't.
Positive opinion: "Delia not only performs this valuable function
for those who missed out at home, she is a wonderful role model - Christian,
wife, mother"
Negative opinion: "Many of today's teens and twenties away from
home simply don't know complicated recipes, such as toast. No doubt
mother was too busy earning the money to pay for the toaster"
3. Lifestyle
If living by ourselves we'll eat microwave meals for one from the supermarket.
If living in a couple we'll get a takeaway. Familes are different. They
love to sit down together to eat - usually in a McDonald's or Burger
King. Sometimes we like to have friends round for dinner - when those
instant curries and cooking sauces branded by the other TV chefs come
in very handy.
Positive opinion: "We're all too busy today to develop our cooking
skills. So what happens when we have friends for dinner? Delia gives
us the skills we need"
Negative opinion: "Delia's next series should give us tips on
buying ready meals from supermarkets. For example, have you tasted that
sushi from Waitrose? Not at all bad, you know, and if you arrive just
before closing time, it's half-price. These are much more useful skills"
4. Media
Cookery programmes keep us watching. The low-budget mid-afternoon cookery
programmes clock up bigger audiences than many of the multi-million-pound
drama blockbusters.
Positive opinion: "The BBC may be threatened by satellite, cable
and digital channels, but the Delia effect shows it still has a huge
influence on the middle-ground audience"
Negative opinion: "Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Chekhov - if only they'd
written recipe books they'd be getting much better ratings. How about
Yukio Mishima's guide to making yakitori?"
5. Business
In the six weeks following Delia's omelette programmes, 54 million more
eggs were sold. The manufacturers of a certain aluminium pan used to
sell 200 per year. In the four months following a programme where she
recommended it, they sold 90,000. A previous Delia series notoriously
caused the country's shops to be cleared of cranberries.
Positive opinion: "Delia's shows inspired a miller from Cumbria
to devise a special new fine white flour blend that creates a perfect
white sauce. He sent it her, she loved it, she featured it on her show,
and now Carr's Flour Mills are selling out of the stuff. So the Delia
effect can help in developing useful new cooking products and techniques"
Negative opinion: "The way to succeed these days is not to make
a good product at a good price. You just need a recommendation on a
prime-time cookery programme. The easiest way to rescue the Rover car
factory in Longbridge is not to adopt German productivity techniques
- you just get Delia to say she's got one"
Too many cooks on television? Certainly. Too many cooks spoil the broth?
Perhaps. But if you just have one cook, and it's Delia, the broth will
be perfect.
Going Native