Leyel’s Picnic for Motorists is designed for an emerging market linking the joy of picnics with the pleasure of motoring. “There are many people with cars who make a regular habit of spending Saturday or Sunday in the country,” Leyel trills, “with a hamper of food, they are independent of hotels and can eat their meal in any part of the country they choose.” . . . Most dishes I have chosen can be bought ready cooked from one of the large shops or pastrycooks if ordered the day before, but for those who wisely prefer to have dishes made at home, I give the recipes.”
Despite its title, Picnic for Motorists is often unpicnicky. Leyel acknowledges that though this is a picnic book for motorists, much is because she likes the food: cold boiled bacon, Russian croquettes, hard-boiled eggs, French plums, or cold deviled mutton served on a bed of Nasturtium Sauce. “No one is too young or too old to delight in such a simple pleasure as a picnic in lovely surroundings,” she offers, “and there is no more perfect way of spending a hot day.”
A reminder about trash – “It is very distressing to see the countryside disfigured sometimes by paper bags and empty bottles and it spoils the enjoyment of all those to who a picnic in the open air is a very real pleasure.”
Recipes are reprinted in 2011 as The Perfect Picnic. The new title indicates that motoring and picnicking are so tightly joined that contemporary editors thought it dull to keep the old title.
*Leyel was first an herbalist and second a cookbook writer. Elizabeth David was impressed by Leyel very early on, and she mentions her books in South Wind in the Kitchen (1998) as an influence, though she complains that Leyel was addicted to jellied foods. “I wonder if I would ever have learned to cook at all,” David confessed, “had I been given a routine Mrs. Beeton to learn from instead of the romantic Mrs. Leyel.”
Featured Image: Cover by Alex Jardine
See C.F. Leyel. Picnics for Motorists. London: G. Routledge & Sons, 1936.