Without a Delia, cooking is off the table for a generation

The food writer and TV personality taught millions of Britons key skills in the kitchen. But somewhere between Uber Eats and TikTok recipes, we've lost our way, argues Helen Coffey.

-  Helen Coffey

“TikTok’s viral cucumber salad recipe sends couple to hospital.” Could any headline more aptly sum up the skills vacuum that haunts an entire generation when it comes to cooking?

The recipe in question involved slicing up a cucumber and adding some flavour by way of sauce and spice – to even call it “cooking” would be somewhat of a stretch – and the influencer couple in question ended up in hospital because the man used a mandoline to do the slicing. Suffice to say he wasn’t as careful as he should have been. (Fear not, the pair were back to making social media videos the second they’d returned from A&E to reattach the tip of his finger.)

It’s not the only indication that all is not well in the kitchen. Delia Smith, Britain’s OG doyenne of home cooking, said in a recent Times interview that she “feel[s] sorry that a lot of young people don’t know what a good pork chop is like”, and that she “can’t bear” to watch modern cooking shows. To her, Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver represent “the last of the last army” of proper recipe writers for home cooks. She didn’t come right out and say that young people have lost their way – but there seemed a suggestion that times have changed. And not necessarily for the better.

The 83-year-old knows more than a little something about the business of food. Her Complete Cookery Course book, published in 1989, revolutionised home cooking, teaching several generations how to make delicious meals for the first time with precise, step-by-step instructions. She followed it with hit after hit, as well as presenting hugely popular cooking shows like Delia’s How to Cook. Dubbed the “Delia effect”, her recommendation of certain products or ingredients at the height of her fame was credited with prompting an instant increase in their sales.