What is a Bacon Badger?
Learning to cook through illustrations
Shelagh Fraser, the author of the 1962 cookbook Clare Goes Cooking, was taught to cook through her mother’s illustrations. Cooking often fell to Shelagh due to her mother’s job as a ballet dancer (I’m assuming the hours were long?), and when Fraser complained cookbook recipes were too complicated for her to follow her mother responded by painting a whole book of recipes.
‘Why don’t you draw me pictures showing me how to cook and see if I can follow those?’ I asked my mother. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘We’ll start with breakfast.’ And start we did. She sat down with my box of paints and made a whole book of cookery recipes for me.
Mummy and Daddy had their breakfast before us and went out early… Daddy to his office and Mummy to a rehearsal at her theatre. And I was left at home to cook my first breakfast for my twin brothers.
This, to me, seems mad. A child cooking for other children. No adult supervision. Boiling water, frying eggs. Sharp knives, hot oil. What could go wrong? Different times!
The recipes get progressively more complicated and range from cheese dishes, party food, BBQ dishes (what?), before ending on Christmas food.
A metal wheelbarrow with the kitchen grill across was our first barbecue.
Again, different times.
Although all our cooking resources are now just a click away there is something lovely about seeing a recipe unfold through illustration. Often when I’m cooking from a recipe I have to look up what a particular phrase means or what a dish is supposed to look like. Illustration takes out the guess work.
There are many recipes included in here which almost certainly have been lost to time (Beef Boats, I’m looking at you), but one of my absolute favourites is this, the Bacon Badger. Scroll down to read!
Shelagh Fraser went on to become an actor, most notably in Star Wars. Quite a career swerve!
Bacon Badger
A bacon badger is, essentially, a banana wrapped in bacon. We all know that salty and sweet go hand in hand but is anyone brave enough to actually try this? Let me know:
How to make a Bacon Badger
Split bananas lengthwise and spread with chutney.
Put halves together again like a sandwich. Roll 2 rashers of bacon round each and fix by piercing with a skewer.
Put into frying pan and fry until bacon is cooked.
Serve on fried bread with half a previously grilled
tomato placed under each bacon roll.
5 Put onto plates and eat with bread rolls or muffins
An Idea
I’ve been thinking about this letter and where to take it next and for some reason I cannot get idea of a printed letter, posted to your actual letterbox, out of my head.
During lockdown Richard Turley — co-founder of Civilization and now Interview’s creative director — posted out a series of fun zines. It was incredible to receive something tangible during such a desolate time and that feeling has stayed with me.
I suppose it’s no surprise I now have a bookshop by post.
This has also coincided with me printing out all my favourite Substacks to read in bed / in the garden / on the train. It’s a joy! You should try it.
So what I’m saying is, is… this is an idea, still quite not fully formed, but growing. A little letter, filled with cookbooks and recipes and chat. From me, but also from you? Who knows. Either way, someone talk me out of it:
i thought it was a bacon burger at first and then horrified on second read
Would eat the cursed bacon badger