The Centaur's Kitchen : Prospect Books : 9781903018736 : 1903018730 : 16 Nov 2009 : A new paperback edition of a wonderfully evocative cookery manual by one of England's greatest modern food-writers. The Centaur's Kitchen had never (before 2005) been shown to the public, except in the galleys and state-rooms of the ships that once sailed under the ensign of the Blue Funnel Line. It was written in 1964, at the request of the company chairman, to better instruct their Chinese cooks in cooking fresh and flavoursome food. In a few short chapters, Patience Gray lays out a whole repertoire, drawn mainly from the Mediterranean and France, that might be cooked on board ships. Her aim was to wean the cooks off frozen, dried and packeted food and to respond to both the seasons and the supplies available at ports of call. The style of cookery was much as in her earlier, and first, book Plats du Jour (1957): retro to us, bourgeois French in another form of shorthand. The style of writing is eloque