Although Modern Cookery was not reprinted in full until 1994, the book has been admired by English cooks in the second part of the 20th century, and influenced many of them, including Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson, Delia Smith and Rick Stein.

[4][b] In 1811 Trotman died, and John was offered the opportunity to become the junior partner in the firm; he accepted and the business was renamed Studd, Halliday and Acton.

[9] The food historian Elizabeth Ray, writing in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, states that Acton travelled abroad for the good of her health, because she had a weak constitution.

[25][f] The work was aimed at the English middle classes;[27] in the preface she wrote: The details of domestic economy, in particular, are no longer sneered at as beneath the attention of the educated and accomplished; and the truly refined, intelligent, and high-minded women of England have ceased, in these days of comparative good sense, to consider their acquaintance with such details as inconsistent with their dignity or injurious to their attractions.

A chapter covers curries (and potted meats), and gives recipes for Eastern "chatneys" (chutney), treating them as a naturalised Anglo-Indian dish, rather than of solely Indian origin, according to the professor of English literature Susan Zlotnick.

[36] The reviews for Modern Cookery were positive,[37] and the critic from The Morning Post considered it "unquestionably the most valuable compendium of the art that has yet been published".

[40] The unnamed critic for The Atlas described the layout for the recipes to be "excellent"[41] and, in a positive review in The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, praise was given to "the intelligibility of the instructions which are given", which contrasted with other cookery books.

[50] In the preface to the 1855 edition, Acton wrote of "the unscrupulous manner in which large portions of my volume have been appropriated by contemporary authors, without the slightest acknowledgement of the source from which they have been derived".

[51] She was in increasingly poor health during the 1850s and wrote in her preface that she was "suffering at present too severe a penalty for ... over-exertion"; this toil, she continued, was "so completely at variance with all the previous habits of my life, and ... so injurious in its effects".

[52] Acton had been disappointed that she had not been able to add as much information into the 1855 edition about bread-making as she wanted to, but decided, despite her health, that she would take on the subject in a new work, The English Bread-Book for Domestic Use.

[j] Published in May 1857, this was not a recipe book along the same lines as Modern Cookery, but is described by Hardy as "a serious, scientific study ... much darker in tone than her previous work".

[59] Lee Christine O'Brien, in her examination of 19th-century women's poetry, considers that Acton "participated in a poetic field the richness of which eclipsed her own output".

[61] Aylett and Ordish class Acton's poetry as being written in a romantic style; they consider the work to be "accomplished rather than inspired", although it is also "derivative and often banal" and clichéd.

[63] O'Brien sees humour in some of Acton's poetry, and cites "Come To My Grave"—a work about "a mildly acerbic and witty potential revenant, musing on revenge"—as a parody of a love lyric with Gothic romantic overtones.

[64] Come to my grave when I am gone, And bend a moment there alone; It will not cost thee much of pain To trample on my heart again– Or, if it would, for ever stay Far distant from my mouldering clay: I would not wound thy breast to prove E'en its most deep, 'remorse of love.'

The grave should be a shrine of peace Where all unkindly feelings cease;– Though thou wilt calmly gaze on mine I would not live the hour to see, Which doom'd my glance to rest on thine:– That moment's bitter agony Would bid the very life-blood start Back, and congeal around my heart!–[65] O'Brien sees that, through the high quality of Acton's prose, Modern Cookery is a unique cultural document.

[69] Elizabeth Ray observes that while Acton "is basically a very English cook", many of the recipes are labelled as French dishes, and foreign food is given its own chapter.

[76][77] In her preface to the book, Acton writes that "It may be safely averred that good cookery is the best and truest economy, turning to full account every wholesome article of food, and converting into palatable meals what the ignorant either render uneatable or throw away in disdain".

[80][k] The social historian John Burnet observes that although the dishes were supposedly aimed at middle-class families of modest income, the book contains recipes that include truffles in champagne, soles in cream and a pie of venison and hare.

Examining a 100-word paragraph in Modern Cookery for instructions on beating egg whites for a sponge cake, David considers it superior to an eight-page piece on the same topic in the 1927 work La bonne cuisine de Madame E.

[90] Similarly, in her recipe for Superior Pine-Apple Marmalade, she writes that if the mixture is placed onto a direct heat it "will often convert what would otherwise be excellent preserve, into a strange sort of compound, for which it is difficult to find a name".

[94] In 1861 Isabella's husband, Samuel, published Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management, which also contained several of Acton's recipes.

[100] In her works, Isabella Beeton partly followed the new layout of Acton's recipes, although with a major alteration: whereas Modern Cookery provides the method of cooking followed by a list of the required ingredients, the recipes in The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine and Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management list the timings and components before the cooking process.