Even though she wasn’t there, there’s no doubt that Myrtle Allen was the star of the show at the inaugural University College Cork (UCC) memorial lecture in her name. Speakers on the night included Ross Lewis of Chapter One fame who said Myrtle remains a profound influencer on the Irish restaurant scene.

She believed in the quality of Irish produce and the people who produced it

“She used terms such as foraging, local, organic, farm-to-fork and provenance before anyone did in this country. She taught us all that great food happens at the interface of land and people. She really believed that healthy soil made for healthy food.”

He said Myrtle fed guests like she would her friends and ego played no part in her life even when the accolades poured in. “She believed in the quality of Irish produce and the people who produced it.”

Big bang

His words were echoed by John McKenna who, along with Sally McKenna, knows the story of every food establishment in the country.

“Myrtle was the ‘big bang’ of Irish cookery. She was revolutionary and always stood out. The tradition of the big house had been ‘keep out’ but she opened the gates and brought people in. That was 1964 and everything good that’s happened to Irish food dates back to that year.

There was no hierarchy at Ballymaloe. Myrtle took everyone’s strengths and made more of them

Recalling his first visit to Ballymaloe, John said the dining room was busy and there was Myrtle clearing tables for the next guests. “She showed that the boss works here. There was no hierarchy at Ballymaloe. Myrtle took everyone’s strengths and made more of them. Her advice was to ignore wretched customers who demanded swanky food. She held fast to butter and the local abattoir.”

Keynote speaker was Claudia Roden, one of the most famous food writers in the world.

“We must remember that Myrtle was a farmer’s wife, self-taught who put Ireland’s gastronomy on the world stage. That is some achievement.”

Archives

In a further development, UCC announced it had acquired Myrtle Allen’s archive of papers. The papers includes scrapbooks of traditional recipes sent to her by readers of the Irish Farmers Journal. Myrtle wrote her food columns for the paper from 1962 until the early 1970s.

The Myrtle Allen Archive will be housed at the Boole Library in UCC where it will be highly relevant to UCC Food and Culinary Historian, Regina Sexton. Regina has been researching the influence of Myrtle Allen on Irish food culture since 2013.

She described the papers as an insight into a woman whose ethos to cooking and Irish produce would come to frame much of how we engage with contemporary Irish food culture today.

The event coincided with the launch of UCC’s Post-graduate Diploma in Irish Food Culture.