 Clarissa Dickson Wright, in her A History of English Food, calls Acton "the best cookery writer of the period", noting that she paid "considerable attention" to curry in the book. Dickson Wright comments that Acton knew about "her countrymen"'s lack of understanding of curry and "lamented' the great superiority of the oriental curries over those generally prepared in England '". She further notes that Acton suggested practical improvements, such as grating coconut into the gravy, and using tamarind, acid apples and cucumber to simulate the "piquancy you get with bitter gourds, mango, and so on", which she comments was certainly better than lazily adding lemon juice, but still nothing like "anything prepared by my grandmother's Indian cook."
