Poor old Marie Antoinette: it’s not enough that she had to
powder her hair mauve and sculpt it into fantastic shapes, or that her young
husband was a dud in bed, or that her head was lopped off in the French
Revolution. She is also remembered for a phrase she never uttered, the
bitchiest phrase since “speak to the hand,” or “whatev” — “Let them eat cake.”
The phrase was “let them eat brioche,” and no-one really knows who said it or
when or why.
What is clear, however, is that none of these are the kind
of cakes she might have had in mind had she been around to utter such a thing.
Marion Harris Neil, the author of Mrs.
Neil’s Cooking Secrets and about a gazillion other highly useful and
efficient books on household management and cookery, was the Proletariat
version of Queen Marie. These are some of the delicious cakes she wanted people
to bake.
Mrs. Neil’s Cooking
Secrets, The Procter & Gamble Co., 1924
Also from this book: Crisco Fever, The Importance of Being Ernest
