Ann Kirby comes from humble means with a lame father and a mother suffering from dementia. Her brother works in a London kitchen for a famous French chef, inspiring Ann with his tales of the food they prepare. When Ann is fortunate enough to be hired by Eliza as a kitchen assistant, she draws strength and a sense of purpose from her, discovering her own ambitions.

Trivia that I listened to but did not retain involved the long journeys of the words “ketchup” and “turkey” into English. A really charming historical fiction novel that's full of gorgeous recipies and descriptions of food. At its heart is the uplifting story of the friendship between Eliza and Ann Kirby, her kitchen help, which crosses the class divide.' Good Housekeeping

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Exhilarating to read - thoughtful, heart-warming and poignant, with a quiet intelligence and elegance that does its heroine proud’ Bridget Collins

Eliza with her gift for writing notices that the way the recipes are written is not practical. She decides to list the ingredients separately. And with the help of Ann, they test the same recipe a few times with slight changes: adjusting the cooking times, seasonings, and quantities, to make it most pleasant for the palate. Culinary enthusiast, and fans of strong historical female characters will not want to miss this one!

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There isn't a lot here that really couldn't have been condensed into a magazine long-read. And it could have been edited much better. As noted elsewhere, "San Francisco" is misspelled (with another "s" vs. a "c" in the middle). His wife Janet is mentioned but it's not clear who she is at the first mention and seems like a rando name dropped into the text. The writing seems disjointed and while some of the information is really interesting (the origins of ketchup) the writing really isn't very good. It almost feels like more than one hand wrote this and everything was combined together in a sloppy effort to make a coherent narrative. This charming story of a friendship that was formed in a kitchen is based on the real life of food writer and poet Eliza Acton, who created one of Britain’s first cookery books. I loved the bond that she and her kitchen help Anna Kirby forge despite the huge difference in their class; they’re both very determined women. A fabulous historical novel” PRIMA Lccn 2014020202 Ocr tesseract 4.1.1 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_module_version 0.0.5 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA16989 Openlibrary_edition

but i really enjoyed this book, despite how long it took me to come to that conclusion. food and etymology are both inherently fascinating to me, and i still think with fondness of my undergrad etymology class and wish i'd studied it more in my academic career. I love Abbs’s writing and the extraordinary, hidden stories she unearths. Eliza Acton is her best discovery yet’ Clare Pooley The best ingredient in this story is the friendship between the twosome. As they cooked and chatted, I wanted to walk into that kitchen, grab a plate and join them. I am thinking in particular of that lovely French dinner that they linger over…..Libations are still around too. Modern hiphop culture has a libationary tradition of "pouring one out" -- tipping out malt liquor on the ground before drinking, to honor a friend or relative who has passed away - - described in songs like Tupac Shakur's "Pour Out a Little Liquor." (It's especially appropriate that malt liquor, a fortified beer made by adding sugar before fermenting, is itself another descendent of shikaru.) The story is told through two perspectives, Eliza, born into a wealthy family who then loses it all and Anne, born into poverty with an alcoholic father and a Mother who has succumbed to dementia at an early age. The two meet when Eliza and her mother open a boardinghouse where Ann comes to work. When you hold someone in such high esteem and then discover something they have hidden that brings them down to a human level again you are highly disappointed, and this became the downfall of the two women's relationship.