Cast Iron Ranges How AGA Became an Icon

ThE faThEr of ModErN food WriTiNg
T
oday it is tricky to imagine a world without
wall-to-wall cookery shows and books by
celebrity chefs topping the bestseller lists
on a weekly basis. However, it wasn’t always so and
without the input of a few notable names it might
never have happened…
Arguably the first ever celebrity chef, Ambrose Heath
quite simply changed the way Britain cooked. He
penned more than 100 cookery books, offering up
recipes for an extraordinary number of foodstuffs
from the prosaic potato to the rather more exotic
squirrel and turtle. In 1933 Heath turned his hand to
AGA cooking with the publication by Faber & Faber
of Good Food on the AGA.
Brands appointing ambassadors is not a new
phenomenon and AGA Heat Ltd was justifiably
proud of its work with Heath, who was in at the start
before Bell’s Heat had even been acquired by AGA
Heat. e foreword to Good Food on the AGA,
attributed simply to Bell’s Heat Appliances Ltd, says:
“In writing this book for AGA, Mr Heath has
achieved far more than we ourselves visualised when
the book was planned, for not only has he written
on the best way of securing the greatest use and
satisfaction from the cooker, but he tells of many
dishes singularly fitted for the preparation on it;
dishes which are gathered from the cuisine of many
lands and which will help to brighten our table.”
Aer the publication of the book, Heath’s association
with the AGA cooker continued to grow. In 1935
he was appointed e AGA Cookery Advisory
Department’s Gastronomical Advisor. In a letter
of the time which went out to distributors, Mabel
Collins wrote: “Mr Heath will give free advice to
owners on their cookery problems”.
Heath enjoyed his schooldays at the progressive
Clion College, though he did say: “I didn’t like
the formality of ordinary education. I was interested
in special things.”
AMBROSE HEATH
Gastronome
Food writer
Cookbook author
Ambrose Heath
(1891–1969) was born
Francis Geoffrey Miller.
Because his parents
thought journalism an
unrespectable career,
he became known
professionally as Ambrose
Heath. The decision not
to use his real name
was taken, he told an
interviewer in 1966,
because his father was
a gentleman. “My
parents were supremely
uninterested in food,”
he later said.
Ambrose Heath was the Mary Berry of his day – a renowned food
writer trusted by millions of British cooks. A big fan of the AGA cooker,
in the 1930s he joined AGA Heat Ltd’s pioneering Cookery Advisory
Department as Gastronomical Advisor…
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How e AGA Became An Icon 31
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