I have always thought that there is no more fruitful source of family discontent than a housewife's badly cooked dinners and untidy ways.
Isabella BeetonDining is the privilege of civilization. . . . The nation which knows how to dine has learnt the leading lesson of progress.
Isabella BeetonThe half-hour before dinner has always been considered as the great ordeal through which the mistress, in giving a dinner-party, will either pass with flying colours, or lose many of her laurels.
Isabella BeetonIt is true, says Liebeg, that thousands have lived without a knowledge of tea and coffee; and daily experience teaches us that, under certain circumstances, they may be dispensed with without disadvantage to the merely animal functions, but it is an error, certainly, to conclude from this that they may be altogether dispensed with in reference to their effects; and It is a question whether, if we had no tea and no coffee, the popular instinct would not seek for and discover the means of replacing them.
Isabella Beeton