Eliza Acton, my heroine

What is the greatest British cookbook of all time? Not Mrs Beeton, given that she pinched most of her recipes from other people. Nor is it Elizabeth David, since she mostly ignored British food (her bread and spice books are the exceptions).

Jane Grigson is tremendous, of course, and Nigella's How to Eat is in my view the best British cookbook of the past two decades. Many would choose Delia.

But all of these writers owe a debt to a Victorian spinster from Tonbridge in Kent, whose Modern Cookery for Private Families was first published in 1845.

Eliza Acton (1799-1859) is not quite a household name. She deserves to be. A jauntily retro orange and burgundy edition from Quadrille (£16.99) is a reminder of just how good Acton was.

You only need to read a single recipe – in Acton's cool, precise prose – to see why Elizabeth David called it 'the greatest cookery book in our language'.

'Let them be very fresh; break them singly and carefully,' Acton says of the eggs for an omelette. A recipe for 'Her Majesty's Pudding' starts, enticingly, 'Infuse in a pint of new milk half a pod of vanilla, cut into short lengths, and bruised.'

She dispenses her sly wit sparingly, like truffles. 'The Publisher's Pudding', we are told, 'can scarcely be made too rich' (it is studded with Jordan almonds and muscatel raisins) in contrast to 'The Poor Author's Pudding', a modest bread-and-butter affair.

Modern Cookery would not have come about at all, had Acton's own publishers, Longman, not rejected her second volume of poetry. Eliza, the eldest of five children of a brewer, did not show any ambition to be a cookery writer. Her first book, in 1826, when she was 27, was a volume of romantic poems.

A decade later she offered Longman a second volume. They suggested she write something more practical. So she did, applying herself to years of experiments at the stove before venturing into print.

Though the book was addressed to 'families', her own household was just herself and her mother (plus servants). But she garnered recipes from friends, and tested them mercilessly. You can tell she has put in the hours, standing over preserving pans observing exactly the moment that redcurrant jelly gels (after eight minutes' boiling).

Her methodical mind also led her to a great innovation. Hers was the first British cookbook in which ingredients and cooking time were systematically given as a separate section at the end of the recipe, instead of muddled in with the method.

I can't pretend I want to cook every dish in Modern Cookery. Mock turtle soup does not sound quite so 'modern' now as in 1845. The remarkable thing, though, is how fresh most of her 'receipts' seem: an 'English salad' of tender lettuces, cress, chives and young radishes; cauliflowers with parmesan; quince jelly; 'orange-flower macaroons (Delicious)'.

What makes this book great, above all, is Acton's very British sensibility. She calls a spade a spade, noting that some of the coffee served on the newfangled railway lines was a 'commercial disgrace'.

When Acton really loves something she does not gush but puts it in brackets, as if holding her emotions in. 'Lemon Dumplings (Light and Good)', for example. Or 'Mushrooms Au Beurre (Delicious)'. It is this combination of honesty and reticence that makes her Eliza Acton (The Best).