Foreword by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

I can’t remember a time when The Pauper’s Cookbook hasn’t exerted some influence on the food I eat. My mum - a wonderful, thrifty and inventive cook - had a well-thumbed copy on her kitchen shelf and she used it regularly. Her battered edition of Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking was there too - as was a glossy, white, padded hardback volume of Katie Stewart’s Times Cookbook (conceived, I believe, as a bridal edition). These two she often turned to for what you might call aspirational fare - her seventies dinner parties. But I’ve no doubt that Jocasta Innes held the greater sway over the way we were all fed.