The Carved Angel Cookery Book

Product Information

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." So how did this middle-class woman from Birmingham become such a pioneer? "It's funny," Molyneux says, "but after leaving school I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do. I'd enjoyed cooking as a child, so decided to try my hand at the local domestic science college. After that, I was at a loose end – this was prewar, a time when one's parents had more influence over the choices you made – and my father, who was a chemist, got me a job in the works canteen of a local industrial plating firm." It was a great combination, but more than that Joyce was a valuable source of advice, understated, as was everything about her but always wise. It was also the first restaurant I had been to where the kitchen was open to the diners, very trendy in those days.

Bryan Webb, chef-patron at Tyddyn Llan in Llandrillo, Denbighshire, described her as "a fantastic cook" and "a great inspiration to all of my generation". Joyce Molyneux was profiled on Channel 4's pathbreaking series, Take Six Cooks, in 1986, when she showcased some of her fish recipes. There could hardly have been a greater disparity between her appealing domestic approach and the highly fangled nouvellerie on display in the rest of the strand. In 1990, The Carved Angel Cookery Book was published, written in association with Jane Grigson's daughter Sophie. Here too, the contrast was instructive. Unlike many another restaurateur's recipe book of the period, it was both inspiring in its reach but practical for the home cook. On the cover, Joyce appeared in the famous headscarf, sparing a moment for a camera in the act of slicing a salmon. It would become one of the most treasured cookbooks of the period. 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 In the 1980s The Carved Angel Cookery Book by Joyce Molyneux was published, becoming an instant classic.

When Perry-Smith sold up in 1972, Molyneux decamped to the south-west to take the reins of a down-at-heel restaurant in Dartmouth that would become her home for the next 27 years. To begin with, she ran the place with Perry-Smith's stepson, Tom Jaine (who went on to edit The Good Food Guide), and it was Perry-Smith's niece, Meriel Matthews, another Hole in the Wall graduate, who inadvertently provided the impetus for the new book. "While having a clearout, Meriel came across a stash of old recipes from the restaurant," Molyneux says, "and one thing led to another." (Her only previous publication was 1990's The Carved Angel Cookery Book, which sold 50,000 copies, a staggering number for a chef without a TV deal or newspaper column.) During a period when the Roux brothers, Pierre Koffmann, Nico Ladenis and Raymond Blanc were transforming the culinary landscape of Britain, Molyneux was a lone female figure at the forefront of the revolution. She was a homegrown talent, without classical French training, but in possession of an instinctive understanding of ingredients and what worked.

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. She will be remembered, with more than the usual fondness at the passing of a veteran, for the quarter-century she spent at the stoves in the Carved Angel on the quayside at Dartmouth. The profound sense of comfort that diners enjoyed, with a view over the river Dart out front, and the undemonstrative bustle of the open kitchens behind (and it is worth recalling what a novelty an open kitchen was in this era), made the Angel one of the radiant jewels of southwestern dining. It seemed a perfect fit with a harbour town still reached, when the road fizzles out, by a short crossing on a flat-bed ferry. Molyneux was banging the drum for cooking with fresh, seasonal produce way before the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstalls and Jamie Olivers of this world were even born, though to judge from the press they get you would be forgiven for thinking this was a thoroughly modern mindset. Joyce Molyneux, one of the first British female chefs to earn a Michelin star, has died at the age of 91. Before securing her place in British culinary history at the Carved Angel, Molyneux had worked at the Mulberry Tree in Stratford-upon-Avon and the groundbreaking Hole in the Wall in Bath, which had also been owned by Perry-Smith.It is small wonder that Molyneux's peers hold her in such high esteem. Angela Hartnett – one of the few women to have followed in Molyneux's Michelin-starred footsteps – says: "Hers was the first 'proper posh' restaurant I ever went to in this country – and the first place I had basil ice-cream, long before today's big boys discovered the Pacojet." 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. That's as may be, but in 1978 this "simple" approach saw Molyneux become one of the first women anywhere to be awarded a Michelin star – even today, you can count on two hands the number of similarly garlanded female chefs working in the UK, and one of those is French.

Food writer and broadcaster Simon Hopkinson describes Molyneux as having "a very, very special approach to cookery, which is one of exceptional good taste, a natural understanding of ingredients and how they are best prepared, cooked, consumed and enjoyed". 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. The Carved Angel" is a successful Devon restaurant, highly rated in "The Good Food Guide" and with a "Michelin star" for over a decade. Joyce Molyneux is its co-proprietor and chef. Together with Sophie Grigson, she has carefully adapted a selection of her recipes for home use. In 1974 Molyneux assumed the role of head chef at the Carved Angel in Dartmouth, Devon, when her friend, colleague and acclaimed post-war chef George Perry-Smith bought the property. Her contribution to Britain's WWII food culture really can't be overstated," said Observer restaurant critic Jay Rayner.

She was one of the first female chefs to be awarded a Michelin star, in 1978. Her kitchens were open to view from all parts of the restaurant, and were never sullied by the bouts of bad behaviour that were almost expected in the rumbustious 80s. She made an early stand in favour of creative local sourcing of ingredients: a photograph from 1984 portrays Joyce and her small staff in front of three dozen purveyors, all drawn from a five-mile radius. TV chef James Martin described her as "a pioneer of the UK food scene" while HOSPA president Harry Murray said she was "a true legend of the culinary arts". Chez Bruce owner Bruce Poole said: "Joyce was a true titan of British cooks. A couple of dinners cooked by her at The Carved Angel are amongst the most memorable of my life. A great loss."

Bath-based baker Richard Bertinet, said: "Sad to hear that the legend and our neighbour in Bath has passed away, I'll miss her stories and smile." Leaving college (where she had to resit her cookery exam), she was found a job by her father in a canteen at W Canning & Co, manufacturers of electroplating equipment. A fellow student alerted her to the chance of a job at the Mulberry Tree in Stratford, where she was taken on in 1951 as general assistant by the chef, who worked alone. Douglas Sutherland was classically trained, very well regarded, and gave Joyce a thorough grounding in professional cooking over the next eight years. It was good enough for her to be able to teach Perry-Smith (an amateur) a thing or two when she joined him at the Hole in the Wall. Photograph: Collins 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. 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." Molyneux with, from left, Angela Hartnett, Nigella Lawson and Jay Rayner, 2017. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The GuardianWhen there was a change of regime in Stratford in 1959, she saw an advertisement for staff at this restaurant in Bath in the Lady magazine. Her application was successful and she soon realised it was no ordinary business. Perry-Smith dressed like a bohemian, had a commanding presence, insisted that his staff work both in the kitchen and front of house (purgatory for Joyce, who was quite shy), and cooked food of generosity and spirit that did not abide by the rules of classical cuisine. 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 Joyce's cooking style derived something from the post-war books of Elizabeth David and the cookery writing of the Observer's Jane Grigson, but in truth, it was never about assiduously following any particular movement. Like a lot of the most admired food, it had a homely quality, except that the technique brought to bear was always several shades above what even the keenest domestic cook could achieve. Her signature dish for many years was a salmon en croute, which contained preserved ginger and currants in golden shortcrust. It was served with a herb cream sauce, and was described as 'a strange but beguiling combination' by the former Good Food Guide editor Tom Jaine, who for many years worked the front of house at the Angel.