Isabella and her main work have been subjected to criticism over the course of the twentieth century . Elizabeth David complain of recipes that are " sometimes slapdash and misleading " , although she acknowledge that Prosper Montagné 's Larousse Gastronomique also contain errors . The television cook Delia Smith admit she was puzzled " how on earth Mrs Beeton 's book managed to utterly eclipse ... [ Acton 's ] superior work " , while her fellow chef , Clarissa Dickson Wright , opine that " It would be unfair to blame any one person or one book for the decline of English cookery , but Isabella Beeton and her ubiquitous book do have a lot to answer for . " In comparison , the food writer Bee Wilson opine that disparaging Isabella 's work was only a " fashionable " stance to take and that the cook 's writing " simply make you want to cook " . Christopher Driver , the journalist and food critic , suggest that the " relative stagnation and want of refinement in the indigenous cooking of Britain between 1880 and 1930 " may instead be explained by the " progressive debasement under successive editors , revises and enlargers " . David comment that " when plain English cooks " was active in their kitchens , " they followed plain English recipes and chiefly those from the Mrs Beeton books or their derivatives " . Dickson Wright consider Beeton to be a " fascinating source of information " from a social history viewpoint , and Aylett and Ordish consider the work to be " the best and most reliable guide for the scholar to the domestic history of the mid @-@ Victorian era " .