Victoria Lily Hegan Ponsonby, Baroness Sysonby (née Kennard; 1874 – 2 June 1955),[1] was a British cookbook author with an "eager and unconventional mind" whose recipes were popular during the 1930s and 1940s.
Despite their position in the higher echelons of British society, the family were "never particularly well" off, according to The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and at one point had to withdraw their daughter from boarding school because they could not pay the fees.
[5] Unlike other upper-class food writers of the interwar years, such as Dame Agnes Jekyll, Victoria Sysonby needed the money that her cookbook brought her.
[6] Lady Sysonby's Cook Book — which was illustrated by Oliver Messel — includes recipes for Soup, Fish, Luncheon Dishes, Meat, Poultry and Game, Vegetables, Salads, Puddings, Savouries, Cakes, Jams and Jellies, Sauces, Sandwiches and Mixed Drinks.
Her recipes came from a surprisingly wide range of countries: New Zealand raspberry jam, Hungarian chocolate, Italian gnocchi ("when after a long day, you come in tired and late, this rapidly made rough gnocchi with cheese and herbs is sustaining and easy on the digestion"), Russian cabbage soup, Greek moussaka (her recipe for the latter was a concoction including potatoes, mushrooms, grated carrot and even spaghetti in place of the usual aubergine).