Agnes Marshall
Agnes Bertha Marshall (24 August 1855 - 29 July 1905) was an English culinary entrepreneur. She became a leading cookery writer in the Victorian period, and was dubbed the "Queen of Ices" for her works on ice cream and other frozen desserts. In time before practical domestic refrigeration, her success increased the demand in London for ice imported from Norway. Her 1888 cookery book included a recipe for "cornets with cream", possibly the earliest publication of the edible ice cream cone.[1]
Marshall was born in Walthamstow. Her father, John Smith, was a clerk, but died when she was young and his widow, Susan, remarried. Marshall's early life remains obscure, but it was later written in the Pall Mall Gazette that she studied cooking from an early age, and "practised at Paris and with Vienna's celebrated chefs". She married Alfred William Marshall in 1878.
She wrote four books: Ices Plain and Fancy: The Book of Ices (1885), Mrs. A.B. Marshall's Book of Cookery (1888), Mrs. A.B. Marshall's Larger Cookery Book of Extra Recipes (1891) and Fancy Ices (1894). She also gave public lectures on cooking, and ran an agency for domestic staff. She was granted a patent for an improved ice cream machine that could freeze a pint of ice cream in five minutes, and also suggested using liquid nitrogen to make ice cream. With her husband, she established the Marshall School of Cookery in Mortimer Street in 1883, and published a weekly magazine, The Table, from 1886. The couple also sold cooking supplies and equipment.
She fell from a horse in 1904 and never fully recovered. She died in Pinner the following year, and was cremated at Golders Green crematorium. After her death, the rights to her books were sold to Mrs Beeton's publisher, Ward Lock. Her husband took over the business that they had run together, but it failed. Unlike Mrs Beeton, Marshall quickly faded from public memory.
A biography was published in 1998 entitled Mrs Marshall: the Greatest Victorian Ice Cream Maker, including a facsimile of her 1885 Book of Ices.
References
- ↑ Chris Clarke (2012). " The Science of Ice Cream". p. 9. Royal Society of Chemistry,
Further reading
- Mrs Marshall, the Greatest Victorian Ice Cream Maker, with a facsimile of the Book of Ices 1885, ISBN 1-85825-102-8
- Robin Weir, ‘Marshall , Agnes Bertha (1855–1905)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 3 May 2011
- Agnes Marshall, Queen of Ice Cream, from London Canal Museum
- Food and cooking in Victorian England: a history, Andrea Broomfield, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007, ISBN 0-275-98708-6, p. 134-141
- Of sugar and snow: a history of ice cream making, Jeri Quinzio, University of California Press, 2009, ISBN 0-520-24861-9, p. 158
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