Elizabeth David bibliography
Elizabeth David, the British cookery writer, published eight books in the 34 years between 1950 and 1984; the last was issued eight years before her death. After David's death, her literary executor, Jill Norman, supervised the publication of eight more books, drawing on David's unpublished manuscripts and research and on her published writings for books and magazines.
David's first five books, particularly the earlier works, contained recipes interspersed with literary quotation and descriptions of people and places that inspired her. By the time of her third book, Italian Food, David had begun to add sections about the history of the cuisine and the particular dishes that she wrote about. Her interest in the history of cooking led her in her later years to research the history of spices, baking, and ice.
Many of the recipes in David's early books were revised versions of her articles previously published in magazines and newspapers, and in An Omelette and a Glass of Wine she collected her favourites among her articles and presented them unedited with her afterthoughts appended. A second volume of reprinted articles was published after her death. David's biographer, Artemis Cooper, wrote, "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."
Background
David's interest in cooking was sparked by a 21st birthday gift from her mother of The Gentle Art of Cookery by Hilda Leyel, her first cookery book. 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."In 1938, David and a boyfriend travelled through France to Antibes, where she met and became greatly influenced by the ageing writer Norman Douglas, about whom she later wrote extensively. 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." She continued her exploration of Mediterranean food and the use of fresh, local ingredients in Greece in 1940. When the Germans invaded Greece in April 1941, she fled to Egypt. There, she and her employer engaged a Greek cook who, she wrote, produced magnificent food: "The flavour of that octopus stew, the rich wine dark sauce and the aroma of mountain herbs was something not easily forgotten." In 1942, she moved to Cairo, where she was asked to set up and run the Ministry of Information's reference library. The library was open to everyone and was much in demand by journalists and other writers. She employed a Sudanese suffragi of whom she recalled:
Returning to England after the Second World War and her years of access to superior cooking and a profusion of fresh ingredients, David 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." Partly to earn some money, and partly from an "agonized craving for the sun", David began writing articles on Mediterranean cookery. Her first efforts were published in 1949 in the British magazine Harper's Bazaar. From the outset, David refused to sell the copyright of her articles, and so she was able to collect and edit them for publication in book form. Even before all the articles had been published, she had assembled them into a typescript volume called A Book of Mediterranean Food.
The success of David's books put her in great demand by magazine editors. Among the publications for whom she regularly wrote for some period were Vogue magazine, The Sunday Times and The Spectator.
''A Book of Mediterranean Food'' (1950)
David's first book, A Book of Mediterranean Food, frequently referred to by the abbreviated title of Mediterranean Food, was published by John Lehmann in 1950, only a year after David's first articles had started appearing in British periodicals. The original typescript of the book consisted almost entirely of reused versions of her recent articles. It was submitted to and turned down by a series of publishers, one of whom told her that it needed something more than just the bare recipes. David took note, and wrote some linking text, interspersing her own brief prose with relevant excerpts from a wide range of authors known for their writings about the Mediterranean. They included Norman Douglas, Lawrence Durrell, Gertrude Stein, D. H. Lawrence, Osbert Sitwell, Compton Mackenzie, Arnold Bennett, Henry James and Théophile Gautier.Lehmann accepted the work for publication, and gave David an advance of £100. He commissioned a dust-jacket painting and black and white illustrations from the artist John Minton. Writers including Cyril Ray and John Arlott commented that Minton's drawings added to the attractions of the book. David thought good illustration important. Although she did not like Minton's black and white drawings, she described his 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."
The book appeared when food rationing imposed during the Second World War remained fully in force in Britain. As David later put it, "almost every essential ingredient of good cooking was either rationed or unobtainable." She therefore adapted some of the recipes she had learned in the years when she lived in Mediterranean countries, "to make up for lack of flavour which should have been supplied by meat or stock or butter." The Times Literary Supplement observed, "while one might hesitate to attempt 'Lobster à la Enfant Prodigue', the resourceful cook with time to explore London's more individual shops, and money, should not often be nonplussed." The Observer commented that the book deserved "to become the familiar companion of all who seek uninhibited excitement in the kitchen."
The chapters of Mediterranean Food dealt with: soups; eggs and luncheon dishes; fish; meat; substantial dishes; poultry and game; vegetables; cold food and salads; sweets; jams, chutneys and preserves; and sauces.
The book was reprinted in 1951; an American edition was published by Horizon Press in 1952; and a paperback edition was published by Penguin Books in 1955. In 1956, David revised the work, which was published by Penguin. Translations have been published in Danish and Chinese. In 2009, the Folio Society published an edition with an introduction by Julian Barnes and colour illustrations by Sophie MacCarthy together with Minton's original black and white illustrations.
''French Country Cooking'' (1951)
In this book, David acknowledged her debt to books published in French, by Edmond Richardin, Austin De Croze, Marthe Daudet known as Pampille, and J. B. Reboul. French Country Cooking drew less on David's magazine articles than its predecessor, although one of her best known and most influential chapters, "Wine in the kitchen", was reprinted from an article written for a wine merchant.The main text of the book begins with "Batterie de cuisine", a serious and thorough examination of the equipment that David thought necessary in a good kitchen. Many of the items she mentioned were not widely available in England in the 1950s, such as moulinettes for puréeing, mandolines for slicing vegetables, hâchoires for chopping. The second section of the book is "Wine in the kitchen", which opens:
The remaining chapters of the book follow the pattern of Mediterranean Food: soups; fish; eggs; luncheon, supper and family dishes; meat; poultry; game; vegetables; salads; sweets; sauces; and preserves.
The Manchester Guardian classified the book as more ornamental than useful, a book to make "good reading" rather than "good cooks". Its reviewer, Lucie Marion, took issue with many of David's recipes: "I cannot think that Mrs. David has actually tried to make many of the dishes for which she gives recipes." The Observer, by contrast, considered French Country Cooking "of outstanding merit. The book is eminently practical … its directions are so lucid that the reader might be receiving a concrete demonstration."
As with Mediterranean Food, a second edition was soon called for. By 1956, the book had been reprinted six times in the UK and published in the US. In 1958, David responded to the improved availability in Britain of good ingredients by revising the work, eliminating sections on specialist suppliers, to whom by 1958 it was no longer necessary to resort. In the second edition David also applied second thoughts, eliminating "a few of the longer and more elaborate recipes".
''Italian Food'' (1954)
David's third book differed from its predecessors in that it drew little from anything she had already written. She spent many months in Italy researching it before starting work on the typescript. While she was away, the firm of her publisher, John Lehman, was closed down by its principal shareholder, and she found herself under contract to the far less congenial company, Macdonald.While in Venice during her culinary tour of Italy, David met the artist Renato Guttuso. They struck up a friendship, and he agreed to illustrate her book, which he did, despite the very small fee offered by David's publisher. With two successful books already published, David felt less in need of extracts from earlier writers to bolster her own prose. The Times Literary Supplement said, "More than a collection of recipes, this is book is in effect a readable and discerning dissertation on Italian food and regional dishes, and their preparation in the English kitchen. The text is divided into kinds of food, with chapters on rice, pasta and Italian wines." In The Observer, Freya Stark wrote, "Mrs. David … may be counted among the benefactors of humanity." In The Sunday Times, Evelyn Waugh named Italian Food as one of the two books that had given him the most pleasure in that year. In 2009, Sir Terence Conran called it "the very best book about Italian food that has ever been published here".
Italian Food begins with a chapter on "The Italian store cupboard", giving British cooks, who at that time were generally unacquainted with most of Italy's cuisine and methods, an insight into Italian herbs, spices, tinned, bottled or dried staples including anchovies, tuna, funghi, prosciutto, and chickpeas, and Italian essentials such as garlic and olive oil, both seldom seen in Britain in the early 1950s. The rest of the book follows the basic pattern of the earlier works, with chapters on soups, fish, meat, vegetables and sweets, with the addition of extra subjects relevant to Italian food, pasta asciuta, ravioli and gnocchi, rice, and Italian wine. In a description of the 2009 edition, the publisher wrote:
The first American edition was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1958, after much argument between the head of the company, Alfred Knopf, and the author. Knopf wanted to drop the Guttuso illustrations and rewrite the text for an American audience; David refused, and Knopf eventually gave way. David revised the book for its first Penguin edition in 1963, made further minor revisions for reprints in 1969 and 1977 and revised it again, more extensively, for the 1987 edition, published in hardback by Barrie and Jenkins and, in 1989, by Penguin in paperback. In 2009, the Folio Society published an edition with new illustrations by Sophie MacCarthy and an introduction by Sir Terence Conran.