 This is one of my favourite cookery books, it's called The Accomplished Cook and it's by Robert May and when he wrote this book in 1660 he was 72. What I think you'll be surprised about is the range of ingredients that were available. He describes a pie in which you put live birds and live frogs. When you open that, the ladies will run around and shriek as the frogs jump around and the birds fly about. This kind of totally outlandish idea of entertaining. I just can't get over what you've just said. To be really honest with you, it's all about a show and quite extraordinary the amount of detail, especially in the titles. But I could imagine that the chefs in those days were as under as much pressure as we are today. My training has always been about the classics and I suppose this is classic as it's best. Especially when you show me the illustrations that the salmon on cruise is a dish that is very popular and it's done today and there it is in its, you know, in its first form. It's pretty incredible. People think of the British Library, they think of cookery books. I don't think they think about historic patents and I wanted to show you one of my absolute favourites from 1891. My question to you is what shape is a chocolate biscuit? Round. No it's not. That is the patent for the first chocolate biscuit. So the patent is the shape and the layering and of course I assume the name as well. It's all of those things. So it's quite unusual to get a patent for food. This is why I particularly like it because it's an exception to that. And here is one I think you'll like. Here's a triple egg timer so you can have a soft boiled, a medium boiled or a hard boiled egg. That's a good invention. That's a very good invention. In fact, actually that's a very, very good idea. I'll take a photograph of that. I've never seen one of those. That actually works. That's a great idea. Because everyone says, you know, how do I get my eggs? Everyone has them differently. My family would love that. I think this might be the beginning of a great empire. This is it. And it's stied right there. This is I think a gem of the Victorian era, which is Theodore Garrett's Encyclopedia of Practical Cookery. And I just wanted to show you, for instance, lobster. He gives seventy-one recipes for lobster. I mean, that is... That's a lot of recipes, really. This is the building blocks of the cookery that we cook today with Outer Doubt. So the books were very much part of, can I do it? Can I go into a kitchen? Can I just play around with these? So reading these was really important. And so you also see, in the 1890s, patent applications for lobster crackers. These aren't just kitchen utensils. These are very much front of house. They are for the people and the clients to actually enjoy as well. To sit in the environment of that beautiful buffet that's been laid out for the guests with this sort of cutlery. I thought I was the woman who had everything. And then when I saw this, I felt a bit disappointed. Well, that's really nice. In addition to all the incredible printed material that we have relating to food at the British Library, we also have enormous collections of oral histories of the food industry. And I wanted to display you an interview by a man called Wing Yit, describing when he first came to the UK in the 1950s and working in a Chinese restaurant at that time. I think a lot of people never had a Chinese food before. They go into the Chinese restaurant because the other English restaurant close at half past nine. Everyone come in and want a bread and butter as well. They want a curry, chicken and rice and a bread and butter. Miss grilled bread and butter. Everything a bread and butter. True. Bread and butter. Chips. I always think of library as a place of just books. It's interesting to hear and to know that that exists here. It's quite cool actually. Do you know what's even better? You don't even have to come here. This is all available online. Is it really? And you can listen to many, many people talking about their lives in food from the 1920s to the present day. This is one of my favourite cookery books. By one of my favourite cookery writers, Mrs A.B. Marshall. This book, Fancy Isis, was really her speciality. Ice creams and ices. That must have been exciting for people to try and taste flavours of ice cream and just so new. And she had her school in London and of course this ice trade in the late 19th century, very, very important and allowed for this creativity in restaurants, shops and in private homes. I was going to ask you where to get the ice from and it's sort of where do they make it. They don't make it. It's brought from somewhere a long way away. That must have cost a fortune. That's quite bizarre isn't it? You think ice came from a cold place yet you say something today you just completely take for granted. I'm going to go and tell my children that. They won't believe me. It makes you realise how far we've come in quite a small space of time.