She went on to make the Carved Angel – now the Angel – her own until her retirement in 1999, and famously became one of the first British female chefs to earn a Michelin star while there. In doing so she put the restaurant, and herself, at the forefront of the growth of modern British cookery in the 1970s and 1980s. But what joined these three women at the hip was more than recipes, it was a style of refined and observant cookery that respected the locale while never giving up on adventure or, most important of all, the taste of things. This is what made Joyce such a favourite with home cooks – and the many thousands who dined at her tables. Her Carved Angel Cookery Book, written in 1990 with Grigson’s daughter Sophie, sold well given that Joyce’s exposure to media attention was so slight. Joyce was born in Handsworth, a suburb of Birmingham, the middle child of Irene Mary (nee Wolfenden) and Maurice William Molyneux, assistant chief chemist to the firm of W&T Avery, scale makers. In 1939, as war threatened, the three children were evacuated to Worcestershire, where Joyce was billetted with a family of three girls and attended the local Ombersley primary school and, when she was 11, the Birmingham King Edward VI grammar school for girls, which had been evacuated to Worcester at the same time. She returned to Birmingham in 1943. Joyce's cooking style derived something from the post-war books of Elizabeth David and the cookery writing of the Observer's Jane Grigson, but in truth, it was never about assiduously following any particular movement. Like a lot of the most admired food, it had a homely quality, except that the technique brought to bear was always several shades above what even the keenest domestic cook could achieve. Her signature dish for many years was a salmon en croute, which contained preserved ginger and currants in golden shortcrust. It was served with a herb cream sauce, and was described as 'a strange but beguiling combination' by the former Good Food Guide editor Tom Jaine, who for many years worked the front of house at the Angel.

Our menus were long,” says Molyneux, poring over one. “That’s because we moved [elements of] dishes from hot to cold as the days went on. Also, in George’s kitchens, everyone did everything. My first job at the Hole in the Wall was to do the laundry; the cleaner made, under instruction, the soups; waiters prepared the cold table, the smoked salmon and so on.” This was a practice she continued at the Carved Angel. She and Perry-Smith wrote the menus together, inspired by, among others, Elizabeth David: “When French Provincial Cooking came out [in 1960], he bought two copies: one for himself, and the other for me.”

Jaine once said: "If you cook beyond 40, there must be something wrong with you. It's so punishing." Yet Molyneux didn't hang up her apron until she was 68. "I just loved cooking," she says. "So many talented people passed through our kitchen. Seeing them all go off and set up on their own, as chefs, producers or whatever, was wonderful. It made it all worthwhile."

The Carved Angel" is a successful Devon restaurant, highly rated in "The Good Food Guide" and with a "Michelin star" for over a decade. Joyce Molyneux is its co-proprietor and chef. Together with Sophie Grigson, she has carefully adapted a selection of her recipes for home use. Her contribution to Britain's WWII food culture really can't be overstated," said Observer restaurant critic Jay Rayner. That's as may be, but in 1978 this "simple" approach saw Molyneux become one of the first women anywhere to be awarded a Michelin star – even today, you can count on two hands the number of similarly garlanded female chefs working in the UK, and one of those is French. So how did this middle-class woman from Birmingham become such a pioneer? "It's funny," Molyneux says, "but after leaving school I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do. I'd enjoyed cooking as a child, so decided to try my hand at the local domestic science college. After that, I was at a loose end – this was prewar, a time when one's parents had more influence over the choices you made – and my father, who was a chemist, got me a job in the works canteen of a local industrial plating firm." In the 1980s The Carved Angel Cookery Book by Joyce Molyneux was published, becoming an instant classic.Her cooking was often described as “heartwarming”, “reassuring” or “honest”: attributes that endeared her to her public, especially as they never detracted from taste and flavour. In her closing decades at the stove, although she never sought the role and although she had many male lieutenants, she might have been deemed a feminist beacon, as her staff and assistants were overwhelmingly female and went on themselves to often distinguished careers. Molyneux with, from left, Angela Hartnett, Nigella Lawson and Jay Rayner, 2017. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

When there was a change of regime in Stratford in 1959, she saw an advertisement for staff at this restaurant in Bath in the Lady magazine. Her application was successful and she soon realised it was no ordinary business. Perry-Smith dressed like a bohemian, had a commanding presence, insisted that his staff work both in the kitchen and front of house (purgatory for Joyce, who was quite shy), and cooked food of generosity and spirit that did not abide by the rules of classical cuisine. In her years at the Hole in the Wall, where she was employed from 1959 to 1972 by George Perry-Smith, the founder of the restaurant, her (and his) cooking was associated particularly with the books issued from 1951 by Elizabeth David. Neither would deny David’s influence, but in truth their sources were far more eclectic than a single writer. This association continued to be mentioned when Joyce moved to the Carved Angel in 1974, where another intelligent writer, Jane Grigson, was included as a mentor. Again, Joyce would not have disclaimed her admiration for Grigson. In 1974 Molyneux assumed the role of head chef at the Carved Angel in Dartmouth, Devon, when her friend, colleague and acclaimed post-war chef George Perry-Smith bought the property. Bath-based baker Richard Bertinet, said: "Sad to hear that the legend and our neighbour in Bath has passed away, I'll miss her stories and smile."When Perry-Smith sold up in 1972, Molyneux decamped to the south-west to take the reins of a down-at-heel restaurant in Dartmouth that would become her home for the next 27 years. To begin with, she ran the place with Perry-Smith's stepson, Tom Jaine (who went on to edit The Good Food Guide), and it was Perry-Smith's niece, Meriel Matthews, another Hole in the Wall graduate, who inadvertently provided the impetus for the new book. "While having a clearout, Meriel came across a stash of old recipes from the restaurant," Molyneux says, "and one thing led to another." (Her only previous publication was 1990's The Carved Angel Cookery Book, which sold 50,000 copies, a staggering number for a chef without a TV deal or newspaper column.) I loved her cooking, lots of kidneys, oxtail, brain fritters, rabbit, saddles of hare as well as great scallop dishes and wild salmon, in short a real understanding of good English cooking, for which she was awarded a Michelin star. She was great British cook. After she sold the Carved Angel, she used to come to the Seafood quite often and we would sit and chat about local suppliers more than anything else."