Marguerite Patten, cookery book author, at Waitrose. DA5747I DOUBT very much if Marguerite Patten has ever used eye of newt or toe of frog in a recipe, but I'm sure if she did the result would be nutritious and delicious.

The doyenne of cookery writers did, however, once harbour ambitions to be Lady Macbeth in her youth and took herself off to Oldham rep for a season in 1937.

"Oldham was a wonderful education - you learned to make yourself heard," she says.

It was a lesson taken to heart and there she was at 88, in Waitrose Studio earlier this month, regaling us with anecdotes from her life and producing favourite recipes from memory for more than an hour without let or hindrance, her voice still projecting to the back row of the packed house.

Not that Waitrose Studio holds vast numbers, but the organisers said they could have sold twice the number of tickets such is Marguerite's enduring popularity.

In terms of media profile, she might well have been overtaken by the Jamie Olivers and Nigella Lawsons of this world, but she was undoubtedly the Delia of her day and many of us have tattered copies of her many cookbooks tucked away on a kitchen shelf, pages food-stained from much use.

Marguerite was born during the Great War and began her career as a home economist just as World War II loomed.

By 1938, her stint in rep behind her, she landed a job as a senior home economist thanks, she said, to her acting ability when she was asked to demonstrate a recipe at the interview miming all the ingredients and props.

She says she can still feel the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach as she listened to the declaration of war in 1939.

Before rationing came in, she was in Bradford helping to man an Air Raid Precautions canteen every Friday.

"We learned to make mountains of chips in the shortest possible time using lard," she says with relish.

Rationing was introduced in January the following year and Marguerite, employed by the ministry of food, spent her war touring the country demonstrating how to make the most of what little was available.

"We built up a wonderful range of recipes using dried egg and we showed people how to make mock oyster soup. Why did they think the British people were going to miss their oysters?" she mused.

Artichokes were, apparently, the substitute.

She did her first Woman's Hour broadcast and was asked to talk about whale meat stew.

"Whale meat," she explains," was being brought in to eke out the meat rations.

"It tasted like a cross between beef and liver and had a strong oily smell."

In 1947 she was invited to take part in television's first women's programme.

"I'm often put down as the first TV cook, but there was a chap before me," she confides.

As rationing came to an end and her reputation grew, she toured the country "like a spinning top" throughout the fifties.

It was, she said, a magic time.

"People wanted to get back to good British cookery - puff pastry: what a lovely thing to make and what a lovely mess people made - but those who had served abroad were interested in food from other countries.

"We had to educate young people who have never cooked or shopped before because they had gone straight into the services."

She had a whale of a time as the subject of Desert Island Discs and This is Your Life, when Gary Rhodes set her up.

"All the skulduggery that went on - I can say you honestly don't know!" she says, rolling her eyes.

She defines each decade by the food fads that dominated them - prawn cocktail and Black Forest gateau in the sixties, the rise of the freezer and its contents in the seventies, balsamic vinegar in the nineties.

She handed out recipes for scones and tips on souffls - and life.

"If you are ever in a jam, don't panic, just learn, learn as quickly as you can."

Now, although officially retired, she is as dynamic as ever and was at Waitrose to help the store celebrate its centenary. The comparative maturity of both institutions was not lost on her.

"Not so long ago, a researcher for the TV programme The 1900s House rang me up because I'd done a lot of research on Victorian kitchens," she told us.

"He said that they had an old 1900 gas cooker and that I must have used one of those.

"I said, 'I'm awfully sorry - I'm old, but I wasn't around in 1900'.

"Then he made a bad job even worse by asking, 'Have you got any friends who were?'."