Any fan of E.F. Benson’s Lucia series will remember Daisy Quantock, Lucia’s next-door neighbor in the village of Riseholme. Benson describes Daisy as being a middle-aged woman in perfect health and therefore devoted to whatever diet or exercise fad comes her way. In the opening chapters of Queen Lucia, the first novel in the series, Daisy is a firm believer in cleansing, particularly in cleansing uric acid from her system. Her husband is quite impatient with the system since it means a longer reign of a bad cook hired when Daisy was under the sway of Christian Science and endless lectures from his wife on the dangers to his system of the foods he craves.
Perhaps Daisy and her cook would have pored over something like The Apsley cookery book (1905), a collection of 448 recipes for those on the uric-acid-free diet. The authors provide recipes for everything from soup to nuts, quite literally, along with introductory chapters extolling the virtues of the diet, suggesting proper cookware, and a table of “food values.”
Flip through the pages below or follow this link to read The Apsley cookery book.