Elizabeth David CBE (born Elizabeth Gwynne, 26 December 1913 – 22 May 1992) was a British cookery writer. In the mid-20th century she strongly influenced the revitalisation of home cookery in her native country and beyond with articles and books about European cuisines and traditional British dishes.

Born to an upper-class family, David rebelled against social norms of the day. In the 1930s she studied art in Paris, became an actress, and ran off with a married man with whom she sailed in a small boat to Italy, where their boat was confiscated. They reached Greece, where they were nearly trapped by the German invasion in 1941, but escaped to Egypt, where they parted. She then worked for the British government, running a library in Cairo. While there she married, but she and her husband separated soon after and subsequently divorced.

In 1946 David returned to England, where food rationing imposed during the Second World War remained in force. Dismayed by the contrast between the bad food served in Britain and the simple, excellent food to which she had become accustomed in France, Greece and Egypt, she began to write magazine articles about Mediterranean cooking. They attracted favourable attention, and in 1950, at the age of 36, she published A Book of Mediterranean Food. Her recipes called for ingredients such as aubergines, basil, figs, garlic, olive oil and saffron, which at the time were scarcely available in Britain. Books on French, Italian and, later, English cuisine followed. By the 1960s David was a major influence on British cooking. She was deeply hostile to anything second-rate, to over-elaborate cooking, and bogus substitutes for classic dishes and ingredients. In 1965 she opened a shop selling kitchen equipment, which continued to trade under her name after she left it in 1973.

David's reputation rests on her articles and her books, which have been continually reprinted. Between 1950 and 1984 she published eight books; after her death her literary executor completed a further four that she had planned and worked on. David's influence on British cooking extended to professional as well as domestic cooks, and chefs and restaurateurs of later generations such as Terence Conran, Simon Hopkinson, Prue Leith, Jamie Oliver, Tom Parker Bowles and Rick Stein have acknowledged her importance to them. In the US, cooks and writers including Julia Child, Richard Olney and Alice Waters have written of her influence.

Life and career

Early years

David was born Elizabeth Gwynne, the second of four children, all daughters, of Rupert Sackville Gwynne and his wife, the Hon Stella Gwynne, daughter of the 1st Viscount Ridley. Both parents' families had considerable fortunes, the Gwynnes from engineering and land speculation and the Ridleys from coal mining.^[1] Through the two families, David was of English, Scottish and Welsh or Irish descent and, through an ancestor on her father's side, also Dutch and Sumatran.^{[2][n 1]} She and her sisters grew up at Wootton Manor in Sussex, a seventeenth-century manor house with extensive, early twentieth-century additions by Detmar Blow.^[4] Her father, despite having a weak heart, insisted on pursuing a demanding political career, becoming Conservative MP for Eastbourne,^{[5][n 2]} and a junior minister in Bonar Law's government.^[7] Overwork, combined with his vigorous recreational pastimes, chiefly racing, riding, and womanising,^[8] brought about his death in 1924, aged 51.^{[9][n 3]}

The widowed Stella Gwynne was a dutiful mother, but her relations with her daughters were distant rather than affectionate.^[11] Elizabeth and her sisters, Priscilla, Diana and Felicité were sent away to boarding schools.^[12] Having been a pupil at Godstowe preparatory school in High Wycombe, Elizabeth was sent to St Clare's Private School for Ladies, Tunbridge Wells, which she left at the age of sixteen.^[13] The girls grew up knowing nothing of cooking, which in upper-class households of the time was the exclusive province of the family's cook and her kitchen staff.^[14]

As a teenager David enjoyed painting, and her mother thought her talent worth developing.^[15] In 1930 she was sent to Paris, where she studied painting privately and enrolled at the Sorbonne for a course in French civilisation which covered history, literature and architecture.^[16] She found her Sorbonne studies arduous and in many ways uninspiring, but they left her with a love of French literature and a fluency in the language that remained with her throughout her life.^[17] She lodged with a Parisian family, whose fanatical devotion to the pleasures of the table she portrayed to comic effect in her French Provincial Cooking (1960).^[18] Nevertheless, she acknowledged in retrospect that the experience had been the most valuable part of her time in Paris: "I realized in what way the family had fulfilled their task of instilling French culture into at least one of their British charges. Forgotten were the Sorbonne professors. ... What had stuck was the taste for a kind of food quite ideally unlike anything I had known before."^[18] Stella Gwynne was not eager for her daughter's early return to England after qualifying for her Sorbonne diploma, and sent her from Paris to Munich in 1931 to study German.^[19]

Actress

After returning to England in 1932 David unenthusiastically went through the social rituals for upper-class young women of presentation at court as a débutante and the associated balls.^[20] The respectable young Englishmen she met at the latter did not appeal to her.^[21] David's biographer Lisa Chaney comments that with her "delicately smouldering looks and her shyness shielded by a steely coolness and barbed tongue" she would have been a daunting prospect for the young upper-class men she encountered.^[22] David decided that she was not good enough as a painter and, to her mother's displeasure, became an actress.^[23] She joined J. B. Fagan's company at the Oxford Playhouse in 1933. Her fellow performers included Joan Hickson, who decades later recalled having to show her new colleague how to make a cup of tea, so unaware of the kitchen was David in those days.^[24]

From Oxford, David moved to the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park, London, the following year.^[25] She rented rooms in a large house near the park, spent a generous 21st birthday present on equipping the kitchen, and learned to cook.^[26] A gift from her mother of The Gentle Art of Cookery by Hilda Leyel was her first cookery book.^[27] She later wrote, "I wonder if I would have ever learned to cook at all if I had been given a routine Mrs Beeton to learn from, instead of the romantic Mrs Leyel with her rather wild, imagination-catching recipes."^[28]

At Regent's Park David made little professional progress. The company was distinguished, headed by Nigel Playfair and Jack Hawkins, and, in the leading female roles, Anna Neagle and Margaretta Scott.^[29] David was restricted to bit parts.^[30] Among her colleagues in the company was an actor nine years her senior, Charles Gibson Cowan.^{[n 4]} His disregard for social conventions appealed strongly to her, and she also found him sexually irresistible. His being married did not daunt either of them, and they began an affair that outlasted her stage career.^[32] Chaney comments, "Cowan was the ultimate outsider. He was working class, left wing, Jewish, an actor, a pickpocket, a vagabond, who lived in caves in Hastings for a time. Her mother called him a 'pacifist worm'. He was a sexual presence, and slept with anything that moved."^[33] David's mother strongly disapproved, and tried to put a stop to the affair.^[34] She arranged for her daughter to spend several weeks holidaying with family and friends in Malta in the first half of 1936 and in Egypt later in the same year, but in her 1999 biography Artemis Cooper comments that David's lengthy absence failed to detach her from her involvement with Cowan.^[35] During her stay in Malta, David was able to spend time learning from her hostess's cook, Angela, who was happy to pass on her expertise. Although she could produce elaborate grand dinners when required, the most important lesson she taught David was to work day in, day out, with all available ingredients, showing her how to make an old bird or a stringy piece of meat into a good dish.^[36]

France, Greece, Egypt and India

After her return to London in early 1937, David recognised that she was not going to be a success on the stage, and abandoned thoughts of a theatrical career. Later in the year she took a post as a junior assistant at the fashion house of Worth, where elegant young women from upper-class backgrounds were sought after as recruits.^[37] She found the subservience of retail work irksome, and resigned in early 1938.^[38] Over the next few months she spent time holidaying in the south of France and on Corsica, where she was greatly taken with the outgoing nature of the people she stayed with and the simple excellence of their food.^[39] After returning to London, and disenchanted with life there, she joined Cowan in buying a small boat—a yawl with an engine—with the intention of sailing it to Greece.^[40] They crossed the Channel in July 1939 and navigated the boat through the canal system of France to the Mediterranean coast.^[41]

The outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 halted their progress. After stopping briefly at Marseille they sailed on to Antibes, where they remained for more than six months, unable to gain permission to leave.^[42] There David met and became greatly influenced by the ageing writer Norman Douglas, about whom she later wrote extensively.^{[n 5]} He inspired her love of the Mediterranean, encouraged her interest in good food, and taught her to "search out the best, insist on it, and reject all that was bogus and second-rate".^[44] Cooper describes him as David's most important mentor.^[41]

David and Cowan finally left Antibes in May 1940, sailing to Corsica and then towards Sicily. They had reached the Strait of Messina when Italy entered the war on 10 June.^[41] They were suspected of spying and were interned. After 19 days in custody in various parts of Italy, they were allowed to cross the border into Yugoslavia, which at that point remained neutral and non-combatant.^[45] They had lost almost everything they owned—the boat, money, manuscripts, notebooks, and David's cherished collection of recipes.^[46] With the help of the British Consul in Zagreb, they crossed into Greece, and arrived in Athens in July 1940.^[47] By this time, David was no longer in love with her partner but remained with him from necessity. Cowan found a job teaching English on the island of Syros, where David learnt to cook with the fresh ingredients available locally. When the Germans invaded Greece in April 1941, the couple managed to leave on a civilian convoy to Egypt.^[48]

Able to speak excellent French and good German, David secured a job in the naval cipher office in Alexandria.^[49] She was quickly rescued from temporary refugee accommodation, having met an old English friend who had an "absurdly grandiose" flat in the city and invited her to keep house for him.^[50] She and Cowan amicably went their separate ways, and she moved into the grand flat.^[51] She engaged a cook, Kyriacou, a Greek refugee, whose eccentricities (sketched in a chapter of Is There a Nutmeg in the House?) did not prevent him from producing magnificent food: "The flavour of that octopus stew, the rich wine dark sauce and the aroma of mountain herbs was something not easily forgotten."^[52] In 1942 she caught an infection that affected her feet. She spent some weeks in hospital and felt obliged to give up her job in the cipher office.^[53] She then moved to Cairo, where she was asked to set up and run a reference library for the British Ministry of Information. The library was open to everyone and was much in demand by journalists and other writers. Her circle of friends in this period included Alan Moorehead, Freya Stark, Bernard Spencer, Patrick Kinross, Olivia Manning and Lawrence Durrell.^[54] At her tiny flat in the city, she employed Suleiman, a Sudanese suffragi (a cook-housekeeper). She recalled:

Suleiman performed minor miracles with two Primus stoves and an oven which was little more than a tin box perched on top of them. His soufflés were never less than successful. ... For three or four years I lived mainly on rather rough but highly flavoured colourful shining vegetable dishes, lentil or fresh tomato soups, delicious spiced pilaffs, lamb kebabs grilled over charcoal, salads with cool mint-flavoured yoghurt dressings, the Egyptian fellahin dish of black beans with olive oil and lemon and hard-boiled eggs—these things were not only attractive but also cheap.^[55]

Cooper comments on this period of David's life, "Pictures of her at the time show a quintessential librarian, dressed in a dark cardigan over a white shirt with a prim little collar buttoned up to the neck: but at night, dressed in exotic spangled caftans, she was a different creature: drinking at Hedjaki's bar, eating at the P'tit Coin de France, dancing on the roof of the Continental and then going on to Madame Badia's nightclub or the glamorous Auberge des Pyramides."^[56] In her years in Cairo, David had a number of affairs. She enjoyed them for what they were, but only once fell in love. That was with a young officer, Peter Laing, but the relationship came to an end when he was seriously wounded and returned to his native Canada.^[57] Several other of her young men fell in love with her; one of them was Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony David (1911–1967). By now aged thirty, she weighed the advantages and disadvantages of remaining unmarried until such time as the ideal husband might appear, and with considerable misgivings she finally accepted Tony David's proposal of marriage.^[58]

The couple were married in Cairo on 30 August 1944.^[41] Within a year, Tony David was posted to India. His wife followed him there in January 1946, but she found life as the wife of an officer of the British Raj tedious, the social life dull, and the food generally "frustrating".^[59] Later in life she came to appreciate the cuisine more, and wrote about a few Indian dishes and recipes in her articles and books.^[60] In June 1946, she suffered severe sinusitis and was told by her doctors that the condition would persist if she remained in the summer heat of Delhi. Instead, she was advised to go back to England. She did so; Cooper observes, "She had been away from England for six years, and in that time she, and England, had changed beyond recognition."^[61]

Post-war England

Returning after her years of Mediterranean warmth and access to a profusion of fresh ingredients, David found her native country in the post-war period grey and daunting, with food rationing still in force.^{[62][n 6]} She encountered terrible food: "There was flour and water soup seasoned solely with pepper; bread and gristle rissoles; dehydrated onions and carrots; corned beef toad in the hole. I need not go on."^[65] In London, she met George Lassalle, a former lover of hers from Cairo days, and their affair was rekindled. The couple went to Ross-on-Wye in November 1946 for a week's break, but were stranded in the town by the season's inclement weather. Frustrated by the poor food provided by the hotel, she was encouraged by Lassalle to put her thoughts on paper.^[66]

Hardly knowing what I was doing ... I sat down and started to work out an agonized craving for the sun and a furious revolt against that terrible cheerless, heartless food by writing down descriptions of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cooking. Even to write words like apricot, olives and butter, rice and lemons, oil and almonds, produced assuagement. Later I came to realize that in the England of 1947, those were dirty words I was putting down.^[65]

When her husband returned from India in 1947, David immediately separated from Lassalle and resumed the role of wife. With the aid of Stella Gwynne, David and her husband bought a house in Chelsea, which remained her home for the rest of her life.^[67] Tony David proved ineffectual in civilian life, unable to find a suitable job; he ran up debts, partly from a failed business venture.^[68] What remained of the spark in the relationship soon died, and they were living separately by 1948.^[69]

Veronica Nicholson, a friend with connections in the publishing trade, persuaded David to continue writing, with the aim that she write a book.^[70] She showed some of David's work to Anne Scott-James, the editor of the British edition of Harper's Bazaar, who thought the writing showed a widely travelled person with an independent mind. She offered David a contract, and David's work began appearing in the publication from March 1949.^{[71][n 7]}

David told Scott-James that she planned to publish the articles as a book, and was allowed to retain the copyright by the magazine. Even before all the articles had been published, she had assembled them into a typescript volume called A Book of Mediterranean Food; many of the recipes ignored the restrictions of rationing in favour of authenticity, and in several cases the ingredients were not available in British shops. David submitted her manuscript to a series of publishers, all of whom turned it down. One of them explained that a collection of unconnected recipes needed linking text. David took this advice, but conscious of her inexperience as a writer she kept her own prose short and quoted extensively from established authors whose views on the Mediterranean might carry more weight.^[73] She submitted the revised typescript to John Lehmann, a publisher more associated with poetry than cookery; he accepted it and agreed to an advance payment of £100. A Book of Mediterranean Food was published in June 1950.^[74]

A Book of Mediterranean Food was illustrated by John Minton; writers including Cyril Ray and John Arlott commented that the drawings added to the attractions of the book.^[76] Martin Salisbury, the professor of illustration at the Cambridge School of Art, writes that Minton's "brilliant, neo-romantic designs perfectly complement the writing".^[77] David placed great importance on the illustration of books,^{[n 8]} and described Minton's jacket design as "stunning". She was especially taken with "his beautiful Mediterranean bay, his tables spread with white cloths and bright fruit" and the way that "pitchers and jugs and bottles of wine could be seen far down the street"; she considered the cover design aided the success of the book, but was less convinced by his black and white drawings.^[75]

The book was well received by reviewers.^[75] Elizabeth Nicholas, writing for The Sunday Times, thought David a "gastronome of rare integrity" who "refuses ... to make any ignoble compromises with expediency".^[79] Although John Chandos, writing in The Observer, pointed out that "Let no one eating in London—with whatever abandon—imagine that he is eating Mediterranean food in the absence of Mediterranean earth and air", he finished his review by saying that the book "deserves to become the familiar companion of all who seek uninhibited excitement in the kitchen".^[80]

The success of the book led to offers of work from The Sunday Times—for which she was paid an advance of 60 guineas—Go, a travel magazine owned by the newspaper, and Wine and Food, the journal of the Wine and Food Society.^[81] In August 1950 David and her husband went on their final holiday together with the money from the new contracts, although they had trouble with the car they were using for touring and the holiday was unsuccessful.^[82] On her return she invited Felicité, her youngest sister, to move into the top flat in her house. David was a reluctant and unskilful typist—she preferred the feel of writing with a pen—and in exchange for a low rent, Felicité expertly typed her articles and books, and later acted as her principal researcher.^[83]

A Book of Mediterranean Food was successful enough for Lehmann to commission David to write a sequel, to show the dishes of rural France. This was French Country Cooking, which David finished writing in October 1950. Minton was employed to illustrate the work, and David gave him detailed instructions about the type of drawings; she was more pleased with them than those for her first work.^[84] Despite their difficult relationship, David dedicated the book to her mother.^[85] Before the book was published, David left England to live for a short time in France. She was motivated by a desire to gain a wider knowledge of life in the French countryside, and to put distance between her and her husband. She left London in March 1951 for Ménerbes, Provence.^[86] She spent three months in Provence; although the weather was initially cold and wet, it soon turned warmer and she enjoyed herself so much that she considered buying a house there. In June 1951 she left Ménerbes and travelled to the island of Capri to visit Norman Douglas. When she left in late August, she toured briefly around the Italian Riviera researching for an article for Go, before returning to London.^[87]

In September, shortly after her return, French Country Cooking was published. It was warmly reviewed by critics,^[88] although Lucie Marion, writing in The Manchester Guardian, considered that "I cannot think that Mrs David has tried actually to make many of the dishes for which she gives recipes".^[89] David wrote to the paper to set the record straight, saying that it would have been "irresponsible and mischievous" if she had not tested them all.^[90]

Italian, French and other cuisines

Lehmann and David agreed that her next book should be about Italian food; at the time, little was known in Britain about Italian cuisine and interest in the country was on the rise. She received an advance of £300 for the book.^[91] She planned to visit Italy for research, and wanted to see Douglas in Capri again, but received news of his death in February 1952, which left her deeply saddened.^[92]

David left London in March, arriving in Rome just before the Easter celebrations. She toured the country, watching cooks at home and in restaurants and making extensive notes on the regional differences in the cuisine.^[93] While in Rome she met the painter Renato Guttuso; deeply impressed by his work, particularly his still lifes, she asked if he would illustrate her book. To her surprise he agreed and, while considering the fee of £60 absurdly low, he kept to his word and produced a series of illustrations.^[94]

Arriving back in London in October 1952, David began a relationship with an old flame from India, Peter Higgins, a divorced stockbroker; it was the beginning of the happiest period of her life. She spent the following months writing the book, recreating the recipes to work out the correct measurements.^[95] She felt less emotionally connected to Italy than with Greece and southern France and found the writing "uncommonly troublesome", although "as recipe after recipe came out ... I realized how much I was learning, and how enormously these dishes were enlarging my own scope and enjoyment".^[96] Italian Food was published in November 1954.^[97] At the time, many of the ingredients used in the recipes were still difficult to obtain in Britain. Looking back in 1963, David wrote:

In Soho but almost nowhere else, such things as Italian pasta, and Parmesan cheese, olive oil, salame, and occasionally Parma ham were to be had. ... With southern vegetables such as aubergines, red and green peppers, fennel, the tiny marrows called by the French courgettes and in Italy zucchini, much the same situation prevailed.^[96]

Italian Food was warmly received by reviewers and the public, and the first print run sold out within three weeks.^[98] The Times Literary Supplement's reviewer wrote, "More than a collection of recipes, this book is in effect a readable and discerning dissertation on Italian food and regional dishes, and their preparation in the English kitchen."^[99] Freya Stark, reviewing for The Observer, remarked, "Mrs David ... may be counted among the benefactors of humanity."^[100] In The Sunday Times, Evelyn Waugh named Italian Food as one of the two books that had given him the most pleasure in 1954.^[101]

By the time she completed Italian Food, Lehmann's publishing firm had been closed down by its parent company, and David found herself under contract to Macdonald, another imprint within the same group. She intensely disliked the company and wrote a most unflattering portrait of it in a 1985 article.^[102] Disapproving of the approach to her books that the company took, her agent, Paul Scott, persuaded Macdonald to relinquish their option on the next book. David signed instead with the publisher Museum Press for her next book, Summer Cooking, which was published in 1955.^[103]

Summer Cooking was illustrated by David's friend, the artist Adrian Daintrey. He would visit her at home and sketch her in the kitchen while she cooked a lunch for them both.^[103] Unconstrained by the geographical agendas of her first three books, David wrote about dishes from Britain, India, Mauritius, Russia, Spain and Turkey, as well as France, Italy and Greece.^[104] The book reflected her strong belief in eating food in season; she loved "the pleasure of rediscovering each season's vegetables" and thought it "rather dull to eat the same food all year round".^[105] She said that her aim was to put:

emphasis on two aspects of cookery which are increasingly disregarded: the suitability of certain foods to certain times of the year, and the pleasures of eating the vegetables, fruits, poultry, meat or fish which is in season, therefore at its best, most plentiful, and cheapest.^[106]

Soon after the publication of Summer Cooking, David was wooed away from her regular column in Harper's by Vogue magazine, which offered her more money and more prominence—a full central page with a continuing column following, and a full page photograph. The new contract meant she also wrote for Vogue's sister magazine House & Garden.^[107] Audrey Withers, the editor of Vogue, wanted David to write more personal columns than she had done for Harper's, and paid her £20 a month for food ingredients and from time to time £100 for research trips to France.^[108]

David visited several areas of France, completing her research for her next book, French Provincial Cooking, which was "the culmination and synthesis of a decade of work and thought".^[109] Published in 1960, it is, according to Cooper in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the book for which she would be best remembered.^[41] David's agent negotiated contracts with a new publisher, Michael Joseph, and a new illustrator, Juliet Renny.^[110]

Reviews of the new book were as complimentary as those for its predecessors.^[111] The Times Literary Supplement wrote, "French Provincial Cooking needs to be read rather than referred to quickly. It discourses at some length on the type and origin of the dishes popular in various French regions, as well as the culinary terms, herbs and kitchen equipment used in France. But those who can give the extra time to this book will be well repaid by dishes such as La Bourride de Charles Bérot and Cassoulet Colombié."^{[112][n 9]} The Observer said that it was difficult to think of any home that could do without the book and called David "a very special kind of genius".^[114]

French Provincial Cooking was dedicated to Peter Higgins, still her lover. David's estranged husband had lived in Spain since 1953 and, to his wife's embarrassment, he was named in a divorce case which was reported in the gossip column of The Daily Express. In an interview published in the newspaper, Tony had referred to David as "my ex-wife"; she filed for divorce, and the process was finalised in 1960.^[41][115]

1960s

In 1960 David stopped writing for The Sunday Times, as she was unhappy about editorial interference with her copy; soon afterwards she also left Vogue as the change in direction of the magazine did not suit the style of her column.^[116] She joined the weekly publications The Spectator, Sunday Dispatch and The Sunday Telegraph.^[117] Her books were now reaching a wide public, having been reprinted in paperback by the mass-market publisher Penguin Books, where they sold more than a million copies between 1955 and 1985.^[118] Her work also had an impact on British food culture: the historian Peter Clarke considers that "The seminal influence of Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking (1960), with its enormous sales as a Penguin paperback, deserves historical recognition."^{[119][120][n 10]} Cooper considers that David's "professional career was at its height. She was hailed not only as Britain's foremost writer on food and cookery, but as the woman who had transformed the eating habits of middle-class England."^[41]

David's private life was less felicitous. In April 1963 her affair with Higgins came to an end when he remarried. For a period she drank too much brandy and resorted too often to sleeping pills.^[122] Probably as a result of these factors and overwork, in 1963, when she was 49, David suffered a cerebral haemorrhage.^[41] She kept the news of the event within her close circle of friends—none of the editors of the publications she worked for were aware of the collapse—as she did not want her reputation as a hard worker to be damaged. She recovered, but her confidence was badly shaken and her sense of taste was temporarily affected; for a period she could not taste salt, or the effect salt had on what she was cooking, but her sense of the smell of frying onions was so enhanced as to be unpleasant for her.^[123]

In November 1965, together with four business partners, David opened Elizabeth David Ltd, a shop selling kitchen equipment, at 46 Bourne Street, Pimlico. The partners were spurred on by the closure of a professional kitchenware shop in Soho on the retirement of its owner, and the recent success of Terence Conran's Habitat shops, which sold among much else imported kitchen equipment for which there was evidently a market.^[124][125] Among her customers were Albert and Michel Roux, who shopped there for equipment that they would otherwise have had to buy in France.^[126]

David, who selected the stock, was uncompromising in her choice of merchandise; despite its large range of kitchen implements, the shop did not stock either wall-mounted knife sharpeners or garlic presses. David wrote an article called "Garlic Presses are Utterly Useless", refused to sell them, and advised customers who demanded them to go elsewhere.^{[41][127][n 11]} Not available elsewhere, by contrast, were booklets by David printed specially for the shop. Some of them were later incorporated into the collections of her essays and articles, An Omelette and a Glass of Wine and Is There a Nutmeg in the House?^{[129][n 12]} The shop was described in The Observer as:

... starkly simple. Pyramids of French coffee cups and English pot-bellied iron pans stand in the window. ... Iron shelves hold tin moulds and cutters of every description, glazed and unglazed earthenware pots, bowls and dishes in traditional colours, plain pots and pans in thick aluminium, cast-iron, vitreous enamel and fireproof porcelain, unadorned crockery in classic shapes and neat rows of cooks' knives, spoons and forks.^[125]

David reduced her writing commitments to concentrate on running the shop, but contributed some articles to magazines, and began to focus more on English cuisine. She still included many recipes but increasingly wrote about places—markets, auberges, farms—and people, including profiles of famous chefs and gourmets such as Marcel Boulestin and Édouard de Pomiane.^[131] In her later articles, she expressed strongly held views on a wide range of subjects; she abominated the word "crispy", demanding to know what it conveyed that "crisp" did not;^{[n 13]} she confessed to an inability to refill anybody's wineglass until it was empty;^{[n 14]} she insisted on the traditional form "Welsh rabbit" rather than the modern invention "Welsh rarebit"; she poured scorn on the Guide Michelin's standards; she deplored "fussy garnish ... distract from the main flavours"; she inveighed against the ersatz: "anyone depraved enough to invent a dish consisting of a wedge of steam-heated bread spread with tomato paste and a piece of synthetic Cheddar can call it a pizza."^[135]

While running the shop, David wrote another full-length book, Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen (1970). It was her first book in a decade and the first of a projected series on English cookery to be called "English Cooking, Ancient and Modern".^[136] She had decided to concentrate on the subject while recuperating from her cerebral haemorrhage in 1963. The book was a departure from her earlier works and contained more food history about what she called "the English preoccupation with the spices and the scents, the fruit, the flavourings, the sources and the condiments of the orient, near and far".^[137]

Later years

Elizabeth David Ltd was never more than modestly profitable, but David would not lower her standards in search of a commercial return. A new manager was brought in to run the shop and David fought against many of his changes, but she was always in the minority against her fellow directors.^[138] The stress of disagreements over company policy—and the deaths of her sister Diana in March 1971 and her mother in June 1973—contributed to health problems and she suffered from chronic fatigue and swollen, ulcerous legs.^[139] Gradually her business partners found her commercial approach unsustainable, and in 1973 she left the company. To her annoyance, the shop continued to trade under her name, although she tried periodically to persuade her former colleagues to change it.^[41]

David's second book on English food was English Bread and Yeast Cookery, which she spent five years researching and writing.^[140] The work covered the history of bread-making in England and an examination of each ingredient used.^[141] She was angered by the standard of bread in Britain and wrote:

What is utterly dismaying is the mess our milling and baking concerns succeed in making with the dearly bought grain that goes into their grist. Quite simply it is wasted on a nation that cares so little about the quality of its bread that it has allowed itself to be mesmerized into buying the equivalent of eight and a quarter million large white factory-made loaves every day of the year.^{[142][n 15]}

In 1977 David was badly injured in a car accident—sustaining a fractured left elbow and right wrist, a damaged knee cap and a broken jaw—from which she took a long time to recover.^[144] While she was in hospital, English Bread and Yeast Cookery was published. Its scholarship won high praise, and Jane Grigson, writing in The Times Literary Supplement, suggested that a copy of the book should be given to every marrying couple,^[145] while Hilary Spurling, reviewing for The Observer, thought that not only was it "a scathing indictment of the British bread industry", but one done with "orderliness, authority, phenomenal scope and fastidious attention to detail".^[146]

Some of the research David undertook for English Bread and Yeast Cookery was done with Jill Norman, her friend and publisher.^[147] The pair decided that they should produce two further books: Ice and Ices and a collection of David's early journalism. Like her book on bread, the scope for Ice and Ices grew the more David researched the subject. The compilation of existing essays and press articles took less time, and in 1984 An Omelette and a Glass of Wine was published, edited by Norman who became David's literary executor and edited further David works after the author's death.^[148]

The death in 1986 of her younger sister Felicité, who had lived in the top floor of her house for thirty years, was a severe blow to David. She began to suffer from depression and went to the doctor after suffering chest pains; he diagnosed tuberculosis and she was hospitalised. After an uncomfortable time over a three-month stay in hospital, where the drugs she was prescribed had side-effects that affected her clarity of thinking, her friend, the wine importer and writer Gerald Asher, arranged for her to stay with him in California to recuperate.^[149]

David made several visits to California, which she much enjoyed, but her health began to fail. Because her legs had been troublesome for some time, she suffered a succession of falls which resulted in several spells in hospital.^[41] She became increasingly reclusive but, despite spending periods in bed at home, she continued to work on Ice and Ices.^[150] She realised that she would not be able to finish the work, and asked Norman to complete it for her. It was published in 1994, under the title Harvest of the Cold Months.^[151]

In May 1992 David suffered a stroke followed two days later by another, which was fatal; she died at her Chelsea home on 22 May 1992, aged 78. She was buried on 28 May at the family church of St Peter ad Vincula, Folkington. That September a memorial service was held at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, followed by a memorial picnic at the Institute of Contemporary Arts.^{[41][n 16]} In February 1994 David's possessions were put up for auction. Many of those who attended—and who bid—were fans of David's work, rather than professional dealers. Prue Leith paid £1,100 for David's old kitchen table because it was "where she cooked her omelettes and wrote most of her books". The auction's total receipts were three times the expected value.^[154][155]

Books

From 1950 onwards David was well known for her magazine articles and, in the 1960s and '70s, for her kitchen shop, but her reputation rested and still rests principally on her books.^[120] The first five, published between 1950 and 1960, cover the cuisine^{[n 23]} of continental Europe and beyond. In the 1970s David wrote two books about English cooking. The last of her books published in her lifetime was a collection of previously-printed essays and articles. From the extensive notes and archives left by the author, her literary executor, Jill Norman, edited and completed four more books that David had planned. Six other books published since the author's death have been compilations drawn from her existing works.^[185]

On the advice of her publisher, David constructed her early books to intersperse recipes with relevant excerpts of travel writing and scene-painting by earlier writers, and, as her confidence and reputation grew, by herself. A Book of Mediterranean Food (1950) draws on nine authors, from Henry James to Théophile Gautier, in between eleven sections of recipes.^{[n 24]} Reviewers commented that David's books possessed literary merit as well as practical instruction.^[187]

Some critics, used to more prescriptive cookery writers, thought her approach assumed too much knowledge on the part of the reader.^[188] In her view, "The ideal cookery writer is one who makes his readers want to cook as well as telling them how it is done; he should leave something, not too much perhaps, but a little, unsaid: people must make their own discoveries, use their own intelligence, otherwise they will be deprived of part of the fun."^{[189][n 25]} In The New York Times Craig Claiborne wrote admiringly of David, but remarked that because she assumed her readers already knew the basics of cooking she would be "valued more by those with a serious regard for food than by those with a casual interest".^{[n 26]} The writer Julian Barnes commented that as an amateur cook he found David's terse instructions intimidating: of a recipe in Italian Food he wrote, "E.D.'s first sentence reads like this: 'Melt 1½ lbs (675 g) chopped and skinned tomatoes in olive oil' ... Melt? Melt a tomato? ... Could it be that Elizabeth David was too good a writer to be a food writer?".^[194] A later cook, Tom Parker Bowles, observes, "You don't turn to Elizabeth David for nannying, step-by-step instruction, or precise amounts and timing. She assumes you know the basics, and is a writer who offers inspiration, and wonderful, opinionated prose. Her recipes are timeless, and all her books wonderful works of reference (and tirelessly researched) as well as beautiful reads."^[195]

The eight books and eight booklets by David published in her lifetime cover the food of France; Italy; the rest of the Mediterranean and beyond, into Asia; and England.

France

Two of David's best-known books focus on the cuisine of France: French Country Cooking (1951) and French Provincial Cooking (1960); France features prominently, though not exclusively, in another two: A Book of Mediterranean Food (1950) and Summer Cooking (1955). She set the pattern for her books by grouping recipes by category, with sections linked by her chosen passages from literature. In her first book, Mediterranean Food, David presented chapters on soups; eggs and luncheon dishes; fish; meat; substantial dishes; poultry and game; vegetables; cold food and salads; sweets; jams, chutneys and preserves; and sauces. She broadly followed this pattern in her next four books.^[196] David's view on the place of French cooking in the hierarchy of world cuisine is set out in her introduction to French Country Cooking: "French regional and peasant cookery ... at its best, is the most delicious in the world; cookery which uses raw materials to the greatest advantage without going to the absurd lengths of the complicated and so-called Haute Cuisine."^[197] She was a firm believer in the traditional French approach to buying and preparing food:

Good cooking is honest, sincere and simple, and by this I do not mean to imply that you will find in this, or indeed any other book, the secret of turning out first-class food in a few minutes with no trouble. Good food is always a trouble and its preparation should be regarded as a labour of love, and this book is intended for those who actually and positively enjoy the labour involved in entertaining their friends and providing their families with first-class food.^[197]

Though not neglecting elaborate dishes—she devoted six pages to the choice of ingredients for and cooking of pot-au-feu or lièvre à la Royale (a salmis of hare)^[198]—David regarded simple everyday cooking as in some ways more demanding, and gave many recipes for "the kind of food which is eaten frequently in thrifty French households, and it is very good".^[199]

David emphasised the importance to cooks of careful and knowledgeable shopping for ingredients. She wrote chapters about French markets such as those at Cavaillon, Yvetot, Montpellier, Martigues and Valence.^[200] Despite a widespread perception that her view of food was essentially Mediterranean, French Provincial Cooking, by far her longest book to date, surveyed the cuisine of France from Normandy and the Île-de-France to Alsace, Burgundy, the Loire, Bordeaux and the Basque Country, as well as the south.^[201] Looking at the entire field of cookery books, Jane Grigson regarded this as "the best and most stimulating of them all".^[202]

Italy

Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=Elizabeth_David
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