The Downstairs Cookbook: Recipes From A 1920s Household Cook - Hardcover

The Downstairs Cookbook offers genuine 1920s recipes from bestselling author Margaret Powell, the house maid and cook who shared tales from her years of service in Below Stairs and inspired the original Upstairs Downstairs TV series. Now in this cookery book she offers a collection of sweet and savoury courses that the servants regularly prepared for their masters upstairs, accompanied throughout by her heartwarming anecdotes from life in service. The recipes include retro classics such as kedgeree, jugged hare and angels on horseback as well as more adventurous offerings such as lobster souffle and veal quenelles. With separate chapters on pastry and preserves, this is Margaret Powell's complete cook's manual for a 1920s household.

Margaret Powell was born in Hove in 1907 and became a kitchen maid at fifteen, eventually progressing to cook. In 1968 the first volume of her memoirs, Below Stairs, was published to instant success, turning her into a celebrity. She followed this up with Climbing the Stairs, The Treasure Upstairs and The Margaret Powell Cookery Book as well as co-authoring three novels, tie-ins to the television series Beryl's Lot, which was based on her life story. She died in 1984.