Gwen Berryman (who played Doris) says in her introduction that the book grew out of the requests from listeners to the programme to provide the recipes that were mentioned - particularly the apple crumble of which Dan and Phil demanded extra helpings.
"Of course. in the programme, the apple crumble was the idea of the script writer, but as I had so many letters addressed to me, asking how it was made, I decided that we must add a little something to the usual recipe found in most cookery books."The book itself is aimed at the generation of young people who grew up with rationing and at working mothers who never had the opportunity to learn basic cooking. Add to that the changes in kitchen equipment:
"the disappearance of the old-fashioned kitchen range and spit [meant] the truly roasted joint also disappeared." and it is no surprise that the recipes in this book are basic and traditional.
The ingredients are very simple and local. As you would expect of a farmer's wife. There are basic bread and pastry recipes. Fruit is picked in season (the most exotic things you will find here are dates and coconut), vegetables grown locally, on the farm or the vegetable garden, and every part of the animal is used (Cow Heel Pie, Brain and egg-on-toast and Pig's fry), and of course mutton, rather than lamb, and rabbit, hare and pigeon (though not game - this is Doris Archer not Squire Lawson Hope).
The book ends with a miscellany of household tips which would have been useful for a 1950s housewife: how to boil handkerchiefs, to remove ink stains, and how to keep your hands clean when handling coal (put old paper bags over your hands).
The 1960s were a transitional period for cooking, which is reflected in the cookbooks of the time. In Ambridge Keeper's Cottage and April cottage were built to replace old farmworker's cottages. Gas and electricity were laid on, and fridges replaced the old pantrys for preserving food. Television brought not only advertising (sorry Grace) but also cookery programmes. This is the era of Marguerite Patten and Zena Skinner, and recipe books exploring international cuisine and catering for social gatherings as much as family lunches. It is also the era of Cooking in a Bedsitter, though the scope for that in Ambridge was limited. Cookbooks began to be illustrated with photographs (though the printing quality of the time rarely made the food look appetising).
Convenience foods were making a comeback, though in packets rather than tins. Ambridge had a local baker (Doughty Hood) so while Peggy and Jill would have been making their own bread and pastries the younger farming generation would not have needed to.
Given all this activity it is surprising that The Archers is represented so sparsely. Ambridge itself was less focussed on farming and MAFF information than on the sensational stories of the Mail van robbery and Jennifer's unconventional love life.
The only published book of this period is Peggy Archer's Book of Recipes, one of a series of BBC booklets which include collections of broadcast recipes from Jimmy Young's programme, and Zena Skinner's. This is the first Archer's booklet that includes village anecdotes and reminiscence alongside practical cooking. Ingredients are still limited though. The lines between fact and fiction begin to blur.
As a cookbook it has the strangest layout. Divided into chapters on Mushrooms, Apples, Ale and Eggs, while meat, fish and vegetables are lumped under 'Miscellaneous'! There are also nods to 'convenience' cooking - if you can't get a sachet of bouquet garni you can make one up.
There is a reference to some recipes being published in The Borchester Echo - copies of which were produced in reality.
Other 'Archers' recipes appeared in more widely circulated publications. I have to thank Helen Burrows for letting me have the illustrated pull-out of Jill's recipes from Woman magazine. The photographs are very '60s. A plate of rice and hard boiled eggs made to look like a smiley face to tempt children, and (described as something Phil would like), a beef burger on a pun, topped with a slice of tomato with three cooked button mushrooms skewered on top. Phil is a braver man than I expected!
Anyone who heard the 19 February 2023 episode of TA will remember Alice talking about Jennifer cutting recipes from magazines for her cookery books - literary recursion!
So we come to the 70s. This was the decade when The Archers stopped broadcasting MAFF information and started aiming for a 'townie' audience rather than a country one. But it was a townie audience that wanted rural escapism, and Martha's recipes provide that.
This was originally published in 1977 with a cover showing an Ambridge village scene, the reprint of 1979 has an interior kitchen scene. Again there are no photographs, but Val Biro's illustrations have the charm and period feel of books published in the 1930s - a hark-back to a post-war idyll which is appropriate for a book published during the troubled political decade of the 1970s.
The focus is still on old fashioned recipes for local produce. The reminiscences between the recipes are as important as the recipes themselves. The book does not have a recipe index but does have a 'Who's Who' of Ambridge residents (referred to as 'the cast' - sorry, Anarchists). For the first time game recipes appear, and recipes for the more expensive ingredients: asparagus, sole, pork fillet, alongside recipes for cheaper, filling food - liver and bacon, stuffed hearts, macaroni cheese. Each chapter ends with a recipe for home made wine. (Not just for the Ambridge Produce show, but a nod to the popularity of home winemaking in this period.)
I confess that this is my personal favourite book, and one that I am currently using for her austerity recipes. It is amazing how many ways you can cook potatoes.
The month-by month presentation, and the Ambridge anecdotes are also a feature of this 1980s book, though it does have both a character and recipe index. Caroline's recipes, as you would expect, are much more up-market than her predecessors. Roast guineafowl, stuffed with grapes (neither would have been encountered by Doris in her day!), crab and mushrooms, brown bread ice-cream; though it is the first outing for Philip Archer's favourite (and mine), Sussex Pond Pudding.
The recipe had been given out on the programme (by Jill) two decades before (which may be where my mother heard it, though she claimed to have overheard it in the queue at the butchers - so possibly early fans of the programme discussing an episode), but not included in previous books and sits slightly oddly here, suet puddings were not an 80s staple.
William Smethurst, who edited this book, says in his history of the programme that it was 'designer Sainsburys', aimed specifically at the urban listeners with ingredients that they could get locally at the supermarket without having to wait for the right season or availability. It is, more than any of the cookbooks, very much of its time. No austerity here.
Angela Piper, in the guise of Jennifer Aldridge published four 'Archer's' cookbooks.
I have divided them into two sets, the 1990s and 2000s because many of the recipes are the same (Jenny's Lamb, Leek and Prune Pies appear in the first three of the books) but the emphasis changes to reflect the era they were published in and the intended audience.
The 1990s books abandon the 'annual round' of previous books and return to a layout that reflects the types of recipes, last seen in Jill's booklet from the 1960s. This is the era of 'celebrity' cookbooks and themed TV cooking, with cookbooks aimed at cooking as a hobby rather than a necessity. Books were often produced for a single ingredient (fish/vegetables) or an ethnic cuisine (Indian/Chinese). The Ambridge books continued (of necessity) to cover a wide range of recipes and ingredients, but the change in format reflects this general trend.
Ambridge baking has always had an element of competition - preparation for the Flower and Produce Show, and sandwiches for the Cricket Teas, or snacks for the Shoot and in these books that is the key focus. Though we don't have a basic loaf of bread, we do get foccacia.
Also here the links to characters from The Archers have been made stronger. Who cannot read Eva's Gluhwein recipe, or Nelson's Naughty but Nice cream flan, without recalling the careers those characters had in Ambridge? If cooking became a hobby activity for many of the British middle classes, this is the point at which listening to The Archers, and discussing plotlines and, indeed, sharing makes and bakes started to become a leisure activity in itself.
The reprint of the Archer's Cookbook, and a new 'Country Cooking' book belong to the early 21st Century move to 'packaging' rather than 'publishing' books. The layout has been revised to be photographic, but not pictures of food, but of recipes cut from magazines, scrawled on shopping lists or typed on index cards. These are 'Mum's recipe books' that the Aldridges were discussing after her death.
In Ambridge, as elsewhere, residents were as likely to order a takeaway pizza, or drop into the Bull for a pie and pint, or dine at Grey Gables or Lower Locksley as they were to buy a pack of Tom Archer sausages to grill for breakfast. It was the age of Nigella, Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsey. With international and out of season ingredients available year round, but also a time when farmer's markets and the organic movement were making headlines.
The programme recognised this. In 2009 Pip Archer announced that she would only eat home grown food sourced from within a five mile radius of Ambridge. She had a lot of choice - venison casserole, roast lamb, vegetable soup - though I suspect that Jill and not Ruth supplied the recipes.
Set against this changing background the Archer's cookbooks continued adherence to the seasonal round and 'good home cooking' was more about nostalgia than practicality. The lone pizza recipe in the 'country cooking' book tops ciabatta with tinned tuna, anchovies and ementall cheese - Doris would have rolled in her grave.
This was published in 2019, so spans two decades rather than one. It is not primarily a cookbook, but is the last of the Archer's tie-in books to include recipes, and the first to deliberately include food featured in the drama.
And not just the village as it is today. There is a hark-back to recipes of the past, of Colonel Danby's curries, the Grundy's sloe gin, and, of course, Susan's Chilli con Carne, and Jill's flapjacks.
We also have the first mention of that 2020s staple quinoa, and the use of monkfish rather than cod for the fish pies (fish recipes are rare in Ambridge cookbooks, too far from the sea, and only fly fishing in the Lakes). There is a vegan bake, a nod to Kate's lifestyle, rather than to the austerity and rationing that prompted the vegetable recipes of Doris' day.
ConclusionIf Archer's cookbooks have a theme it is the watercolour country landscape - more nostalgia for an idyllic countryside - you won't find a picture of Berrow Pig Unit or the Home Farm polytunnels here.
Neither will you find microwave ovens, bread-makers or slow cookers - though many of these recipes can be adapted to these energy and time saving devices. I am sure that Brookfield has a microwave, but I doubt that Jill uses it.
So what about the future of food in Ambridge?
Doris's comment about the demise of the spit roast may have been premature. There have been occasions where the villagers have enjoyed a pig roasted on a spit (though not over an open fire).
And then there is Ian and Adam's pizza business, which survived lockdown.
The Bridge Farm boxes come with recipes in season, and Adam's new forest food venture surely suggests material for a special recipe book - or at least a weekly recipe on the Bridge Farm website!
Back in the 90s the BBC had an arrangement with a commercial producer to sell 'Ambridge' preserves - another venture for Bridge Farm?
Or perhaps the new charging station could take a leaf from Tebay Services book and provide an outlet for local farm produce - and local recipes.
Whatever the future offers I expect that the residents of Ambridge will continue to share their favourite foods - even if they aren't made available to the audience.
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