Cookery Club – Nostalgia Central

1 9 5 6 – 1 9 6 1 (UK)
30 minute episodes

Marguerite Patten (pictured above and at right) worked in the Food Advice division at the Ministry of Food during World War II and had a presence on radio programmes such as Woman’s Hour and Kitchen Front, and then on post-war women’s daytime television programmes such as Designed for Women and For the Housewife.

Patten’s recipes tended to focus on the skills needed for the working woman to manage everyday cooking, especially during rationing, with excerpts like ‘cheaper meats’.

In 1956, she became the presenter of a new programme, Cookery Club, developed as a segment of the television series About the Home (1951 – 1958), part of the afternoon programming designed to engage the female audience.

An innovative feature of the programme was for housewives to send in their recipes, with the winner invited to come into the studio to make their dish live on television.

In 1959, Zena Skinner (pictured below) began presenting for Cookery Club. She had developed her cooking skills as a ‘demonstrator’ for the Electricity Board when she was famously photographed in East Africa by the press.

The producer of Cookery Club saw the photograph and invited her for an audition.

Skinner was loved by her viewers because of her deliberate ‘no-nonsense’ authenticity. When asked if she wanted a helper on Cookery Club, she refused, saying, “What housewife has a helper?”