David - French Provincial Cooking

PENGUIN BOOKS

Elizabeth David discovered her taste for good food and wine when she lived with a French family while studying history and literature at the Sorbonne. A few years after her return to England she made up her mind to learn to cook so that she could reproduce for herself and her friends some of the food that she had come to appreciate in France. Subsequently, Mrs David lived and kept house in France, Italy, Greece, Egypt and India, as well as in England. She found not only the practical side but also the literature of cookery of absorbing interest and studied it throughout her life.

Her first book, Mediterranean Food, appeared in 1950. French Country Cooking followed in 1951, Italian Food, after a year of research in Italy, in 1954, Summer Cooking in 1955 and French Provincial Cooking in 1960. These books and a stream of often provocative articles in magazines and newspapers changed the outlook of English cooks for ever.

In her later works she explored the traditions of English cooking (Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen, 1970) and with English Bread and Yeast Cookery (1977) became the champion of a long overdue movement for good bread. An Omelette and a Glass of Wine (1984) is a selection of articles first written for the Spectator, Vogue, Nova and a range of other journals. The posthumously published Harvest of the Cold Months (1994) is a fascinating historical account of aspects of food preservation, the world-wide ice trade and the early days of refrigeration. South Wind Through the Kitchen, an anthology of recipes and articles from Mrs Davids nine books, selected by her family and friends, and by the chefs and writers she inspired, was published in 1997, and acts as a reminder of what made Elizabeth David one of the most influential and loved of English food writers. A final anthology of unpublished recipes, uncollected articles and essays entitled Is There a Nutmeg in the House? is also available in Penguin.

In 1973 her contribution to the gastronomic arts was recognised with the award of the first Andr Simon Memorial Fund Book Award. An OBE followed in 1976, and in 1977 she was made a chevalier de lordre du Mrite Agricole. In the same year English Bread and Yeast Cookery won Elizabeth David the Glenfiddich Writer of the Year Award. The universities of Essex and Bristol conferred honorary doctorates on her in 1979 and 1988 respectively. In 1982 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 1986 was awarded a CBE. Elizabeth David died in 1992.

Elizabeth David

French Provincial Cooking

Illustrated by Juliet Renny

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published by Michael Joseph 1960
First published in the USA by Harper & Row 1962
Published in Penguin Books 1964
Revised edition 1967
Reprinted with revisions 1970
Reissued in this edition 2011

Copyright Elizabeth David, 1960, 1962, 1967, 1970

All rights reserved

ISBN: 978-0-140-591738-4

To

P. H. with love

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

So many people have helped me in so many ways with the compiling and the production of this book some with advice and material, others with technical assistance, typing, indexing, proof-reading that the acknowledgements which I should like to make to all these friends would fill a number of pages.

But I have only a limited space, so I must restrict myself, first of all, to thanking Miss Audrey Withers, for so many years editor of Vogue, for making it possible for me to go to France on several journeys to collect material for cookery articles subsequently published in the magazine. It is these articles, with a number published in House and Garden between 1956 and 1959, which form the nucleus of this book.

Other material and recipes republished here first appeared in The Sunday Times, Harpers Bazaar, The Wine and Food Society Quarterly, Harrods Food News and Wine edited by T. A. Layton.

M. Andr Simon very kindly gave me permission to reprint an article by Mrs Belloc Lowndes which first appeared in The Wine and Food Society Quarterly, and Messrs A. D. Peters to include an extract from Marcel Boulestins Myself, My Two Countries, published by Cassell & Co. Messrs Martin Secker & Warburg have also kindly allowed me to reprint a passage from Maurice Goudekets Close to Colette, and Mr Vivian Rowe has generously permitted me to reproduce an excerpt from Return to Normandy, published by Messrs Evans Brothers.

Lastly, it would be ungrateful of me to miss this opportunity of thanking my friend Doreen Thornton for driving me, with much patience and care, on many rather arduous journeys around and across France in search of good food and interesting regional recipes.

THE BEGINNING

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INTRODUCTION

Staying in Toulouse a few years ago, I bought a little cookery book on a stall in the march aux puces held every Sunday morning in the Cathedral Square. It was a tattered little volume, and its cover attracted me. In faded pinks and blues, it depicts an enormously fat and contented-looking cook in white muslin cap, spotted blouse and blue apron, smiling smugly to herself as she scatters herbs on a