WHAT must Mr and Mrs Smith have been thinking of? Aware perhaps that their surname did not stand out from the crowd, or indeed the telephone book, they compensated with an unusual first name.

They could have stopped off at an adjacent name and their daughter would have grown up as Delilah Smith. But as this Biblical name derives from the Hebrew word for 'coquette' or 'flirt', they presumably steered clear, knowing their girl wouldn't grow up to be either of those.

Instead they went for Delia, a name derived from Delos, the legendary birthplace of the Greek moon goddess Artemis. And so it was that Delia and Smith came together, a happy joining of the exotic and the mundane.

Parents plucking out an identity for their new-born child fondly think they have just chosen a name the world will remember, hopefully for the right reasons. Mr and Mrs Smith were spot on in their choice. So much so that their whisk-wielding offspring has this week made history, rather than just a very nice cake, by being included in the latest edition of the Collins English Dictionary under 'Delia'.

The television cook who brought confidence to a thousand kitchens, the plain face that launched a thousand rich dinner parties, has become a noun in her own right.

Her Collins entry runs as follows: 'Delia n 1a the recipes or style of cooking of British cookery writer Delia Smith. 1b (as modifier): a Delia dish."

Delia Smith is so familiar, so sensible and so just there, it is possible there is nothing left to know about her - though plenty from her. We know about the multi-million-selling books; her love for Norwich City; her Catholicism. Maybe there are dark secrets, though probably just the odd bar of bitter chocolate. This is a woman who has a larder instead of a past.

In such seeming prim company, it is shocking to find there is a Rolling Stones connection.

What's this? Can Aunty Delia, the nation's favourite kitchen aid, once have had a dangerous rock'n'roll liaison in which she ran with what Allan Jones, editor of the magazine Uncut, this week recalled as "the wildest, rudest, hairiest and most rebellious group around"?

Well, no. She baked the cake on the cover of their 1969 album, Let It Bleed. A nice sponge and a nice story, so I hope it's true.

It's easy to mock Delia, for she's crisp as an iceberg lettuce, prim as a poached egg. Yet with her wooden spoon, she has become a one-woman force for culinary change in this country, a friend to kitchen-phobic Britons everywhere (though perhaps not to their waistlines).

Most households have a Delia. We have a couple, a winter cookbook we don't look at much, and the invaluable original Delia, the big fat paperback version of The Complete Cookery Course, updated in the Nineties and passed on to us by my mother, complete with sticky labels protruding to indicate favourite recipes.

This is in a sense the only cookbook you'll ever need; so why are our shelves crammed with so many others?

Where Nigella flirts with her food, turning cooking into a calorie-laden orgy (now she could have been called Delilah), Delia just cooks and gives good advice. Where Jamie goes surfing or fishing, Delia, brisk as a whisk, gets on with the next recipe.

If there are times when her programmes seem uptight and strict, at least you always learn something, the cameraman doesn't appear to be drunk, and there'll be food on the table at the end.

And what if it is cheese on toast, you can always do a Delia next time.