The Carved Angel Cookery Book

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Prior to Dartmouth, Joyce had undergone probationary years at Stratford-upon-Avon's Mulberry Tree, and then an all-important stint at George Perry-Smith's Hole in the Wall in Bath, one of Britain's most influential restaurants in the 1960s. The salmon dish began there, but was honed to glazed, egg-washed nonpareil at the Carved Angel, along with offerings that owed a little to Mediterranean modes – Provençal fish soup with red-hot rouille; peperanata as a garnish for the cheese soufflé – as well as the demotic food of the European and English heartlands. There was crisply seared boudin blanc with lentils and apple, but there was also in winter a hefty mutton pie. Long before it became the universal badge of honour, Joyce championed local producers, fishers and farmers, with salmon from the Dart, moorland lamb, and Slapton strawberries with clotted cream. urn:lcp:carvedangelcooke0000moly_h4j0:epub:2deab67d-b362-4e4c-8cf9-62340f343001 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier carvedangelcooke0000moly_h4j0 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2drrq2sgn5 Invoice 1652 Isbn 0004112644 Joyce Molyneux, one of the first British female chefs to earn a Michelin star, has died at the age of 91. Jaine once said: "If you cook beyond 40, there must be something wrong with you. It's so punishing." Yet Molyneux didn't hang up her apron until she was 68. "I just loved cooking," she says. "So many talented people passed through our kitchen. Seeing them all go off and set up on their own, as chefs, producers or whatever, was wonderful. It made it all worthwhile."

Restaurant history is not invariably marked by seismic shifts in culinary fashion. Some reputations are honed by quiet persistence in that most elusive field of all – providing a broad constituency of diners with food that is readily comprehensible, but every bit the treat that we hope to find in eating out. The long career of Joyce Molyneux, who has died aged 91, was testament to just that culinary virtue.

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I loved her cooking, lots of kidneys, oxtail, brain fritters, rabbit, saddles of hare as well as great scallop dishes and wild salmon, in short a real understanding of good English cooking, for which she was awarded a Michelin star. She was great British cook. After she sold the Carved Angel, she used to come to the Seafood quite often and we would sit and chat about local suppliers more than anything else."

Our menus were long,” says Molyneux, poring over one. “That’s because we moved [elements of] dishes from hot to cold as the days went on. Also, in George’s kitchens, everyone did everything. My first job at the Hole in the Wall was to do the laundry; the cleaner made, under instruction, the soups; waiters prepared the cold table, the smoked salmon and so on.” This was a practice she continued at the Carved Angel. She and Perry-Smith wrote the menus together, inspired by, among others, Elizabeth David: “When French Provincial Cooking came out [in 1960], he bought two copies: one for himself, and the other for me.” But what joined these three women at the hip was more than recipes, it was a style of refined and observant cookery that respected the locale while never giving up on adventure or, most important of all, the taste of things. This is what made Joyce such a favourite with home cooks – and the many thousands who dined at her tables. Her Carved Angel Cookery Book, written in 1990 with Grigson’s daughter Sophie, sold well given that Joyce’s exposure to media attention was so slight. In the event, this proved to be two new ventures: a restaurant-with-rooms in Helford, Cornwall, looked after by George and Heather, and a place with sensational views of the mouth of the river at Dartmouth in Devon, soon to be christened the Carved Angel. This was run by Joyce in the kitchen and myself (Perry-Smith’s stepson) front of house. I stayed in the post until 1984 and, after a year or two’s interregnum, Joyce was joined by Meriel Matthews (George’s niece), with whom she had a most warm, profitable and satisfactory business partnership until her retirement. In Dartmouth, a small town, her work was no longer viewed with suspicion (‘Such prices!’) but as a matter of pride At the time I was working as an interior designer for a London-based architecture firm. When I got home in the evenings, all I did was cook. Sometimes I stayed up all night cooking. It was an obsession and, eventually, I decided to hand in my notice to pursue it as a career. Trouble is, then I realised how little I knew! Going through the impressionists’ books was important to me, because they put me on to a different level before I went into professional kitchens. Molyneux with, from left, Angela Hartnett, Nigella Lawson and Jay Rayner, 2017. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

My Book Notes

In the 1980s The Carved Angel Cookery Book by Joyce Molyneux was published, becoming an instant classic. Most of the staff were young, middle-class women, who looked on it as a finishing school. But they always worked flat-out, and there was tremendous team spirit. Joyce survived her time waiting at table and concentrated on the kitchen. Here she was soon often in charge. As the years rolled by, and Perry-Smith took a more executive role, she was eventually offered a junior partnership, together with Heather Crosbie (later George’s fourth wife). When the restaurant was sold in 1972, it was expected that she would join her two partners in a new venture. Her cooking was often described as “heartwarming”, “reassuring” or “honest”: attributes that endeared her to her public, especially as they never detracted from taste and flavour. In her closing decades at the stove, although she never sought the role and although she had many male lieutenants, she might have been deemed a feminist beacon, as her staff and assistants were overwhelmingly female and went on themselves to often distinguished careers. Molyneux with, from left, Angela Hartnett, Nigella Lawson and Jay Rayner, 2017. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian