Monica Sheridan

Monica Sheridan (29 January 1912 – 22 April 1993) was an Irish cookery expert, award-winning broadcaster, author, and journalist, and Ireland's first celebrity chef.

Early life and family Monica Sheridan was born Monica Elizabeth Treanor at Augher Castle, County Tyrone on 29 January 1912. Her parents were Hugh Treanor and Mary Ann (née Devine). Her father was a successful cattle and sheep farmer. She had six sisters, Kathleen, Agnes, Dympna, Eva, Eileen, and Mannix, and six brothers, Hugh, Gerald, Maurice, William, George, and Walter.

She spent a great deal of her time with her centenarian maternal great-grandmother, from whom she learnt cooking and other domestic skills. Her great-grandmother lived in a traditional thatched cottage, and also passed on south Ulster folk traditions to Sheridan. Sheridan's mother and aunts were all expert cooks, often baking and preserving fruit. Sheridan attended convent schools with her sisters, but by her own admission, she was a poor student. She graduated from University College Dublin with a BA in French and English. It has been suggested that the first mention of pizza was by Sheridan in The Irish Times in April 1956.

In 1963, she won the Jacob's television award for "putting personality into cooking".

Sheridan wrote for numerous publications including Creation and Gourmet and The Irish Times. She published cookery books which became classics: Monica's Kitchen (1963), The Art of Irish Cooking (1964), and My Irish Cookbook (1965). They had the same humorous and informal style as her television programmes. She cited Kevin Danaher's In Ireland Long Ago (1962) as an influence on her books, as she recalled growing up in rural County Tyrone without sentimentality.