Could Mrs Beeton cook?
This led to the comment that Mrs Beeton couldn’t cook but she could copy. Hughes recounts that Beeton’s first recipe for Victoria sponge was so inept that she left out the eggs and that her work was brazenly copied . Restoration. Miss Hughes also spent a number of years researching Mrs Beeton’s culinary wrongdoings, thus proved many of her recipes were copied word for word from other food writers of her day, and beyond.