“I’m going to cook you the best meal you’ve ever eaten.” That’s how Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) seduces Jean Courtney (Sue Lloyd) in The Ipcress File, the 1965 film version of Len Deighton’s 1962 novel.
Hard man Harry softens in the kitchen. There is an array of pots and pans, many copper, a coloured toaster and a string of onions hanging on the wall – the last not quite right even in 1965. Harry plays Mozart on his gramophone, cracks eggs with one hand and chops onions and a green pepper dexterously. You might like to know that Michael Caine was unable to crack eggs with one hand so a hand double* was used and the hands you see are those of Len Deighton. Pinned up on the kitchen wall is one of Deighton’s recipes, that appeared in the Observer. He buys tinned mushrooms but they are champignons and grinds his own coffee (he uses an electric grinder but has kept an old hand one). It’s a wonder that there is any room left in the film for the main plot.
I was reminded of the film and its culinary content last year by Luke Honey in his blog, The Greasy Spoon. I love the film; it is a 1960s time capsule. There’s a meeting on the, then new, bridge over the lake in St James’s Park. Today they would be jostled by tourists and appear in a thousand selfies. Palmer’s flat is in Notting Hill reminding me of a friend describing his childhood on a desperately poor housing estate in Paddington. “We may be poor”, his mother told him “but you can always be grateful you weren’t brought up in Notting Hill”. The Sun is a broadsheet, milk comes in bottles and the music is by John Barry.
The title of this post is that of Len Deighton’s book, subtitled French Cooking in 50 Lessons. He writes with clarity, for example “veal fat is not highly thought of except for certain rather specialised uses (no one has yet told me what those uses are) and mutton fat is not worth saving”.
* Robert adds that “hand doubles” are quite common when a piano needs playing competently. In The Lady in the Van Helen Davies helps out Maggie Smith. Helen told BBC Wales: “A friend of a friend of mine fixes musicians for film sessions and recordings and things like that. He was looking for a pianist; obviously it could not be anybody young”.
The meal may have been just about ok in 1965, but would be very low grade today. He was rather pretentious, though it was good to try to bring things forward a bit. Happy New Year.
Many thanks for the plug. Like you, I’m a LD fan. I seem to remember (at least in his later books) that he developed a pathological hatred of salt “Salt is the Enemy of the Palate”. Blood pressure problems?
LD is probably right but I saw a book “Salt is Essential” in Waterstones today.