An august bunch they were and the most venerable of them said to me afterwards: “You did it wrongly. You stirred anti-clock-wise. You should always stir clockwise. I was taught that.”

“But why?” I asked. “What happens if you stir anti-clockwise?”

“It curdles.”

If this new series of mine — 13 lessons called “The Grammar of Cookery” — succeeds in releasing the craft of cooking from the bonds of voodoo, mumbo-jumbo, witchcraft and black magic, it will not have been in vain.

In cooking, things happen for the physical reasons that make them happen — and it is those reasons that I am analysing in “The Grammar of Cookery”. That is why we are using such things as microscopes, integral calculus, parabolic graphs and slide rules.

At the same time I hope that no one will get the idea that in order to be a cook you need to be a mathematician or a colloid chemist, nor that in order to make mayonnaise you need a microscope.

No, the whole idea is to show how and why things happen in cookery. It is all basic bed-rock stuff. I wanted it that way and Executive Producer Lloyd Shirley wanted it that way too. A welcome change for me. In the past I have had to fight off attempts to wish on me every conceivable gimmick — practically dancing girls and gypsy violins.

This series will contain no new recipes. To begin with there are no really new recipes. It has all been done before. The Book of Ecclesiastes is right. Actually I think that there are far too many recipes already. Cooking skill is what matters.

Yes cooking skill. And that means love of good food. What becomes of cooking skill when you have the deep-freeze and instant-everything? Isn’t it killed?

Well, has the theatre been killed by television, musicianship by gramophone records, painting by colour printing? Not so as you would notice!

I am not the best cook in the world, not by a long chalk. There are many far better practitioners than me (including you, for all I know). I am just the chap who decided to find out what makes cooking tick and to try and pass on that knowledge.

It is one thing to work out the rules — the “Grammar.” But behind the rules, in every art, there lies the active genius that mocks at rules.

If you are a great cook, madam, you are a singer of songs, a poet, an actress, a painter, a pianist. You are Callas, you are Cilia Black, Vanessa Redgrave, Laura Knight, all rolled into one. And the world is at your feet.

Or it should be.

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Or seeing Henry sheathing his steel after a decisive ploy at Agincourt.

“English cooking,” said Philip Harben, bristling and bustling as he lovingly laid his carving knife away, “is the best in the world. The only problem is convincing the English that it is.”

The tone quite obviously brooked no argument upon the subject. Mr. Harben had no time to spare for anyone who didn’t believe as passionately in English cooking as he did.

He amplified the point in short, sharp bursts of information as he buzzed around his kitchen, cleaning up after the elaborate meal he had just prepared.

“With French cooking, you can get away with so much. It’s complex. But if you stick by the book, you’re pretty safe.

“English cooking has classical simplicity. It calls for perfection of basic materials. And that means that everything you cook must be absolutely right.”

On Sunday afternoon Philip Harben will show us how to improve our cooking in another infectiously enthusiastic edition of ABC’s “The Grammar Of Cookery.”

It’s a crusade that began in the Twenties over the stove of his parents’ home in London.

His mother was Mary Jerrold, a well-known actress. “But she taught me nothing about cooking. I’m afraid,” he said. “She was an abominable cook.

“I remember she used to think she could make bread. It was dreadful. So all that I ever learned about cooking I found out for myself by trial and error.”

The errors?

“I prefer not to remember them,” said Philip.

After leaving school he worked as assistant stage-manager in the theatre, as a cameraman and assistant director in a film studio, and as a commercial photographer. But the call of the kitchen became increasingly irresistible. So in 1938 he took up catering professionally.

Since then he has established himself as one of the country’s most popular television cookery experts. He has made several films.

He has published a number of books on the subject. And he now owns his own industrial catering firm.

But although cooking has proved to be a profitable commercial enterprise, he will always regard the preparation of good food as an art form.

“The French have one great advantage over us in this field.” said Philip. “As a nation they are passionately interested in cooking. And many English people still seem rather to despise it.

“When I go into a restaurant I react to the food I get. If I don’t like it, I say so. If I do like it I send the chef my compliments and invite him to have a glass of wine with me.

“It pays dividends.

“Standards of English restaurants are rising rapidly nowadays. And the standards of French restaurants are falling slightly.

“The day isn’t so far off when Frenchmen will be coming over here and going into ecstasies about the marvellous restaurant they have just discovered in Ashton-under-Lyne.”

Mr. Harben was struck by an afterthought.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I know two marvellous restaurants in Ashton-under-Lyne, already.”

The post Call of the kitchen appeared first on THIS IS ABC WEEKEND from Transdiffusion.

Future trends must be considered together with present requirements in the planning of any production line. Plant has a limited life; there must be room to grow; the quick reorganisation of equipment, demanded by new, more advanced methods of manufacture, must be easy. Truisms all, but particularly pertinent to television; a virile young industry, learning fast, changing with the pattern of public demand, and growing at the accelerated pace of all development in electronic processes.

As a company ABC TV has always been very awake to this changing face. While establishing its resources, it has also been especially busy anticipating the demands of promising and probable developments. A switching of line standards was something to expect. The arrival of colour television was another. Decisions have now been taken on the standards, but in 1959-when the new technical block was being planned for Teddington – the question was still wide open, and suggested the adoption of equipment that would work equally well on 405, 525 or 625. Fortunately manufacturers, too, were then beginning to recognise this need and cameras and monitors designed for quick switching between standards were on the way.

But as very little had been done to produce equipment for signal switching and distribution in a multi-standard form, ABC engineers started development along these lines themselves. And with the obvious advantages then being offered by transistorisation they naturally concentrated on designing equipment that employed this new technique to the full. The result has been a complete range of modular devices for the routing of signals, and with a performance capable of handling colour-another facet of the future that ABC had been investigating in the most practical way possible, through experimentation.

As the BBC were already putting a great deal of effort and brainpower into their design for British colour television, based on the American NTSC system, ABC decided that any experimental and development work they did would be of more value if directed at the embryo SECAM system. Out of this pioneering work, done with the co-operation of GEC, has come some very worthwhile equipment refinements, real flexibility and a lot of novel advantages in the arrangement and design of their technical facilities, and a valuable familiarity with the problems that colour television will bring. And, most practical of all, it has now led to the SECAM system being given high-power transmission trials.

One of the best examples of the Company’s foresight is embodied in the very skeleton of the new Teddington block. With the future promising an influx of new equipment, and new applications of technical space calling for massive reshuffling of facilities, ABC introduced a unique element into the design of the block. The entire floor of the technical area is a pre-cast concrete network of one-foot square holes, supported over a void that can be pressurised with fresh air during operation and is deep enough to crawl in.

Above the ceiling is a similar void that can be exhausted. As a result, equipment can be placed wherever it is needed, and supplied with cooling air and cables simply by cutting corresponding holes in the tiles covering the floor and ceiling grills. Other examples of their eye to the future can be found in the equipment they have chosen; telecine and VTR machines that are instantly switchable between line standards, easily and quickly adaptable for colour; lighting installations with sufficient reserve capacity for colour productions. Or in the arrangement of their facilities; the interlocking of production areas and routing of signals through one, central apparatus area; the special VTR suite equipped for electronic editing.

Perhaps the best composite example of ABC’s planning is Teddington as a whole. It is one of the most modern studio centres in Europe. But the drive towards tomorrow is the same throughout the Company.

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