How to Cheat at Cooking
| Author | Delia Smith |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Cookbook |
| Publisher | Ebury Publishing |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 182663144 |
How to Cheat at Cooking is a cookbook by television chef Delia Smith, published in 2008 by Ebury Publishing. It was her first book following her How To Cook series, and had a television series based on the same recipes on BBC Two. Following publication, Smith was criticised by other chefs due to the use of certain ingredients such as canned minced lamb, and by nutritionists because of the level of salt in some of the recipes. The book increased the sales of several products, described as the "Delia Effect", and has been credited with an increase in the sales of tinned meat over the following two years.
British television chef Delia Smith's first published book was entitled How to Cheat at Cooking, published in 1971. This was a guide to how to combine off-the-shelf products to reduce the time and effort needed when creating meals at home. She had temporarily retired for five years after the success of her How To Cook book series. But she sought to re-create her original book in 2008, including reusing the original title, and hoped to enable people to take shortcuts in recipes.
Prior to the book's release, it was predicted that the "Delia effect" would repeat itself on some of the items mentioned in the book. This is where an ingredient or item mentioned by Smith would increase dramatically in sales – it had occurred in 2001 after she promoted cranberries, and additional sales of 54 million eggs have been credited to the chef after she demonstrated how to boil them on a television show. The media attempted to predict what items might see the effect occur prior to the release of the book; these suggestions included pasta by Fratelli Camisa, spice blends by a company called Seasoned Pioneers, frozen mashed potato by Aunt Bessie and bouillon powder. Joel Rickett, deputy editor of The Bookseller said that "She names particular products and the supermarkets have been scrambling for the ingredients. It will put huge pressure on producers – there's going to be a pitta bread maker somewhere absolutely besieged."
...
Wikipedia