It's partly about admitting the limits of one's ambition; but it's more about one's attitude to failure. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged.

The Times obituarist rightly said of his Simple French Food that it was "one of the very few cookbooks everyone should have".

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. It was, inevitably, in that drawer where you put such things and then forget about them, where everything is tangled up - whisks with chopsticks through their wires - a shameful place.

If we make a dish once, and it turns out anything from a serious muff to a complete hash, then we don't cook it again. Unsuprisingly, I rediscovered timeless classic recipes that are still appropriate for cooking in the 2020's. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.In any case, he said an oven thermometer was essential; you also had to make sure the heat had stabilised before putting the meat in.