In 1998 the most trusted cook in Britain went on television to show the nation how to boil an egg, and sold 54 million extra eggs. Delia Smith had left school at 16 without a qualification. She had been a hairdresser and a washer-up. By the 1990s she had sold more cookery books than anyone in British history, and when she recommended a thing, the shops ran out of it. That autumn she began a new series called How to Cook. The first programme started at the very beginning. How to tell if an egg is fresh. How to boil one. How to fry one, in a little fat, basting the top. How to make an omelette, in butter, in a proper pan. The chefs were scornful. A grown woman, on the BBC, in prime time, explaining a boiled egg. One of them called it insulting. The public's verdict came through the tills. Egg sales across the country rose by 10%. A small firm in Lancashire that made a plain aluminium omelette pan had been selling 200 a year. Delia called it a little gem, and they sold 90,000 in 4 months. Now do the dates. Cookery had been taken off the school timetable in 1990. Eggs had been under suspicion since the cholesterol scare of the 1970s, and a government minister had frightened the country off them altogether in 1988. So by 1998 there was a generation that had never been taught to cook, and had been warned off the cheapest and most complete food in the kitchen. Millions of them were sitting at home, not knowing how long to boil it, and too embarrassed to ask. Delia never made a speech about any of that. She put the pan on and showed them.