Of rum and cake

It was a richly satisfying moment to find a food column in a respected financial paper.

I devoured, with delight, the male columnist's descriptions of his first forays into the kitchen, and his recipes, reproduced from pages torn from his school notebooks and decorated with drawings of planes, because it reminded me of pitched battles fought with an editor who, years ago, had declared, "Broadsheets have no space to waste on people writing about their coffee and upma!"

Recipes, he believed, firmly belonged to the realm of magazines. I suspect someone had posted him a copy of Best Rum Cake Ever, which I duly reproduce here:

Ingredients:
1 or 2 quarts rum
Baking powder
1 cup butter
1 tsp soda
1 tsp sugar
Lemon juice
2 large eggs
Brown sugar
1 cup dried fruit and nuts

Method:
Before you start, sample the rum to check for quality. Good, isn't it?

Now go ahead. Select a large mixing bowl, measuring cup, etc. Check the rum again. It must be just right. To be sure the rum is of the highest quality, pour one level cup of rum into a glass and drink it as fast as you can.

Repeat. With an electric mixer, beat 1cup butter in a large fluffy bowl. Add 1 seaspoon of thugar and beat again. Meanwhile, make sure that the rum is of the finest quality-try another cup. Open second quart, if necessary. Add 2 large leggs, 1 cup fried druit and beat till high. If druit gets stuck in beaters, just pry it loose with a drewscriver. Sample the rum again, checking for conscisticity. Next sift 3 cups of pepper or salt (it really doesn't matter which). Sample the rum again. Sift 1/2 pint lemon juice. Fold in chopped butter and strained nuts. Add one babblespoon of brown thugar, or whatever colour you can find. Wix mell. Grease oven and turn cake pan to 350 gredees.

Now pour whole mess into the coven and ake. Check the rum again, and bo to ged.

While the author of this marvellous recipe remains anonymous, the recipe itself remains the source of much delight to everyone but the aforementioned Ed!

u00a0Traditionally, food writing was confined to champion homemakers who faithfully relayed family recipes to readers. Then, restaurant chefs began sharing their recipes with tales of their kitchen adventures.

While some restaurant reviews and food guides, quite unintentionally, turned into mysteries and thrillers, a new level of sophistication was born when writers put a global-environment spin to what and how we eat, by championing causes like the slow food movement.u00a0 Others began combing food and fiction, where the protagonist would be seduced by the sight of cream being whipped in a steamed-up kitchen.

For food writers with a fierce hunger for all things new, blogs were next on the menu. Serving up a few bites at a time, it was a well-written blog that separated the frauds and the amateurs from the connoisseurs.

And those, who like to keep things short and snappy, have taken to tweeting complex recipes, taking up the 140-character as a challenge. Food writing, when done well, is really an appetising way of reading the world.

Now, if you will let me have my fill of cheap thrills, I must let on that the very same broadsheet has now increased the number of pages and expanded colour coverage on the very same coffee and upma. Only, they call it cappuccino and couscous!