Ruth Mott’s Favourite Recipes, Heart Warming dishes from BBC’s Victorian Kitchen Cook, may surprise some of you as it isn’t a glitzy, cool or trendy book. It’s a book I’ve had for years, given to me by some very dear friends as a birthday gift.

Years ago, I remember watching the television programme The Victorian Kitchen Garden with Ruth Mott the cook, and Harry Dodson the gardener who brought her the most incredible produce from the walled garden just outside the kitchen door. I fell immediately for this wonderful cook. There was a dish that stuck in my mind, where she took mutton chops and dipped them in egg and breadcrumbs and to this day I drool over that dish. She also made a leek pudding with a suet crust; nothing fancy, just proper food using vegetables from the garden, kept so simple. The sound of her cutting through a big, fat leek, hitting the wooden chopping board with her knife, is engrained in my head.

Ruth was born in 1917 and lived a busy life with her television career taking off when she turned 70. In 1970 she went to work as a private cook at a big house in Berkshire and spent the next 18 years cooking there, using old recipes from Victorian and Edwardian times. In 2001 she was a consultant historical cook for the film Gosford Park. Ruth passed away at the age of 95. What an innings. A chef/ cook who could show us all a thing or two.

This is a book I hope young chefs pick up and get something from. There’s a charm about the recipes. The images are very ’80s, but still lovely to look at.