Elizabeth David is often billed as the saviour of English cookery, in much the same way that Julia Child is credited with teaching America how to cook.
David was born on December 26, 1913, and came from rather a grand background. Growing up in the 17th-century Sussex manor house, Wootton Manor, her parents were Rupert Gwynne, Conservative MP for Eastbourne, and the Hon. Stella Ridley, who came from a distinguished Northumberland family.
It is reported that David was given her first cookery book at the age of 19, “The Gentle Art of Cookery” by Hilda Leyel. Leyel wrote of her own love affair with the food of the Levant, one wonders whether she would have taken the foodist path she did if that book had been a copy of “Mrs. Beeton” instead.
She had, especially for the era, rather a rebellious streak-- leaving home at the age of 25 to sail around the Mediterranean with her married lover Charles Gibson-Cowan. Like many before her, and many afterward, she was seduced by the lure of travel, sun, sea, sex and gastronomic delights. She wrote about the lot-- beautifully so-- all through the eyes of food.
Hers was an extraordinary life, through which she discovered the pleasures of cooking in a way directly in contrast with the cheerless British approach to it. She travelled as far as India (although never much rated the food) and returned to Britain to flout convention behind an imposing, yet private (if not almost secretive) persona.
She returned to London in 1946 after seven years abroad during the winter-- it must have seemed like a wretched place. David was driven to put down her memories of the sights and sounds of Mediterranean markets, the heady scent of herbs, garlic and in her words "The sound of air gruesomely whistling through sheep's lungs frying in oil.”
When Anne Scott-James, then editor of Harper’s Bazaar, commissioned David’s first articles she gave David the leeway to digress from “strict gastronomy” and allowed her to delve into the realms of both the emotional and historical aspects of food. The decision moved food out of the dark didactic corners of domestic science and set a precedent that I’d hasten to guess modern food writers would give great thanks for. David’s highly evocative writing could easily be argued Britain’s first “food porn.”
Take this extract from her first book “Mediterranean Food,” commissioned in 1949, for example: "The bright vegetables, the basil, the lemons, the apricots, the rice with lamb and currants and pine nuts, the ripe green figs, the white ewe's milk cheeses of Greece, the thick aromatic Turkish coffee, the herb-scented kebabs, the honey and yoghurt for breakfast, the rose-petal jam ..."
David has become almost a deity in the world of food, with chefs, food writers and food loving general public clinging to her books like “Holy Writ,” they inhale her autobiographies like the aroma of freshly baked bread.
From the beginning, Elizabeth's books were perceived as important, serious and well-researched. In the postwar years-- when people were beginning to travel again and middle class women found themselves doing their own cooking-- her books were crucial in the shift towards the Mediterranean-influenced food that still shapes the way we eat today.
Her writing must have seemed revolutionary. For example, at the time olive oil was sold at the chemist's shop and was marked for external use only. Despite this, she included in her first book a method for stuffing a whole sheep-- calling for plenty of olive oil.
Her effect on British kitchens didn't stop with the food alone. Until then, kitchens had been purely functional and often out of sight. Her singular existence of cooking, writing, and entertaining friends revolved around her farmhouse kitchen table. She served her guests surrounded by open dressers stacked with terracotta and earthenware pots, cast iron pans, peasant pottery bowls of eggs and artfully arranged Mediterranean fruit and vegetables. This was avant-garde for the1950s, but this was how the kitchens of the future would look and function. Never was the statement, “The kitchen is the heart of the home” more true.
But, was she really this “dea domestica” deserving of the current cult following she seems to be enjoying? You can spot her followers throughout our green and sunny lands mumbling about the virtues of crisp baby salad leaves, local bread (but by that I am referring to locally made ciabatta and the like) from artisan producers, sun dried tomatoes and continental cheeses.
Through her remarkable and enticing writings of “far off” lands she led the post war generation away from their traditional food cultures and head south to the more exciting notion of food cultivated in the sun-drenched Med. She did in later books go on to rejoice in the joys of British food, writing such classics as “English Bread & Yeast Cookery.” Happen though the damage had already been done; the British public now seemed to be under the influence of a train of thought that said “good food” meant olives, French cheese and figs, whilst homegrown delights such as apples, cabbages and Stilton were somehow below par.
These days, Britain is having a foodie renaissance with local and seasonal being the key concepts. This is demonstrated in many cases and books like “The Taste of Britain” and cooks such as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall taking the lead. Perhaps losing our connection with Britain’s food heritage would never have occurred without Elizabeth Davids inadvertent leadership, but, where would we have been without her?
Her life was remarkable and her legacy astonishing. Her recipes stand the test of time and her brilliant writing (her books are said to be evocative pieces of travel writing as much as they are a guide to cooking and eating well) was the outcome of racketing around the Mediterranean, traveling, drinking and eating alone in various European cities, and obviously savouring every moment. By all accounts she was disagreeable, but that shouldn't put anyone off her books. Why not make yourself an omelet and pour that glass of wine, before, kicking back, relaxing and reading one of her delectable books? Go on, delve in and take yourself on an amazing culinary journey.
Georgina Ingham is a freelance food writer and editor of Culinarytravels.co.uk.
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