All cookery writers owe a debt to those who have gone before. There is little new in the world. The best cookery writers are those who do not attempt to 'improve' a classic dish with their own additions or emasculate it to fit supposed tastes of their audience. Mention should be made of:

Scrote would also like to mention Adelle Davis the highly-respected american nutritionist who, despite forbidding roasting frying & grilling (because of carcinogens) and recommending that all food should be boiled in her book Let's Cook It Right, still died of cancer.

Scrote also fondly remembers another american with the answer to everything, Jim Fix the jogging guru, who forecast that (by jogging) he would live to to the age of 140. Unfortunately he dropped dead at the age of 50 from a heart attack while out running.

• The un-named author(s) of Cookery Recipes , 18th edition 1966, Scrote's first cookery book, which he still has
• Jocasta Innes, for the original
  Paupers Cookbook
• Claudia Roden, for
  Middle-Eastern Cookery
• Jack Santa-Maria for
  Indian Vegetarian Cookery
• Kenneth Lo, for
  Chinese Cookery
• Theodora Fitzgibbon, for her books, including
  A Taste of London
• Elizabeth David, the queen of cookery writers. Scrote can give some idea of her masterly style by quoting her from Italian Food on wines:
  With the exception of wine produced for their own consumption by one or two private growers there is not, to the best of my knowledge, a drop of drinkable Capri wine to be had in the whole of the Enchanted Isle.