"These essays are noble relics indeed, and Jekyll has the puff-pastry touch."--BookForum

"Three cheers to Persephone Books for publishing this witty, sharp writer, nostalgic but unsentimental, humorous but precise, erudite and always elegant."--"Country Living"

"Kitchen Essays is a rare thing, a cookbook that is as fun to read as its food is to eat."--"Sunday Herald" (Glasgow)

" An] exquisitely reprinted period piece."--"BBC Good Food" magazine

First published in "The Times" (London) during the 1920s, "Kitchen Essays" explains the proper way to make Lobster Newburg while offering fascinating insight into the social history of England.

Agnes Jekyll felt that cooking should fit the occasion and temperament and states that "a large crayfish or lobster rearing itself menacingly on its tail seems quite at home on a sideboard of a Brighton hotel-de-luxe, but will intimidate a shy guest at a small dinner-party." And that "a hardy sportsman should not be fed in the same way as a depressed financier."

Agnes Jekyll (1860-1937) was the daughter of William Graham, Liberal MP for Glasgow and patron of the Pre-Raphaelites. A celebrated hostess and entertainer, her first dinner party included Robert Browning, John Ruskin, and Edward Burne-Jones. She lived in Surrey, England.

The author of "Kitchen Essays" (1922) was sister-in-law to the great Gertrude Jekyll, whose biographer wrote that if she 'was an artist-gardener, then Agnes was an artist-housekeeper.'Agnes was a famous hostess (the guests at her first dinner party included Browning, Ruskin and Burne-Jones) and her home, Munstead House, 'was the apogee of opulent comfort and order without grandeur, smelling of pot-pourri, furniture polish and wood smoke'. During 1921-2 (the now) Lady Jekyll wrote unsigned essays for "The Times" with titles such as "Tray Food" and "Sunday Supper" which were then collected as "Kitchen Essays".