Jane Grigson - English food

PENGUIN BOOKS

ENGLISH FOOD

Jane Grigson was brought up in the north-east of England, where there is a strong tradition of good eating, but it was not until many years later, when she began to spend three months of each year in France, that she became really interested in food. Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery was the result, exploring the wonderful range of cooked meat products on sale in even the smallest market towns. This book has also been translated into French, a singular honour for an English cookery writer.

After taking an English degree at Cambridge in 1949, Jane Grigson worked in art galleries and publishers offices, and then as a translator. In 1966 she shared the John Florio prize (with Father Kenelm Foster) for her translation of Beccarias Of Crime and Punishment. It was in 1968 that Jane Grigson began her long association with the Observer Magazine, for whom she wrote right up until her untimely death in 1990; Good Things and Food with the Famous are both based on these highly successful series. In 1973, Fish Cookery was published by the Wine and Food Society, followed by The Mushroom Feast (1975), a collection of recipes for cultivated, woodland, field and dried mushrooms. She received both the Glenfiddich Writer of the Year Award and the Andr Simon Memorial Fund Book Award for her Vegetable Book (1978) and for her Fruit Book (1982), and was voted Cookery Writer of the Year in 1977 for English Food. A compilation of her best recipes, The Enjoyment of Food, was published in 1992 with an introduction by her daughter, the cookery writer Sophie Grigson. Most of Jane Grigsons books are published in Penguin.

Jane Grigson died in March 1990. In her obituary for the Independent, Alan Davidson wrote that Jane Grigson left to the English-speaking world a legacy of fine writing on food and cookery for which no exact parallel exists She won to herself this wide audience because she was above all a friendly writer the most companionable presence in the kitchen; often catching the imagination with a deftly chosen fragment of history or poetry, but never failing to explain the why as well as the how of cookery. Jane Grigson was married to the poet and critic, the late Geoffrey Grigson.

Sophie Grigson was born in 1959, the daughter of Jane and Geoffrey Grigson. She has contributed to many magazines and newspapers, including the Evening Standard, the Independent, and the Sunday Times Magazine. Her first book, Food for Friends, was published in 1987, since when she has written many cookery books, including Sophies Table (1990), Sophie Grigsons Ingredients Book (1991) and Eat Your Greens, which accompanied her television series of the same name. Her latest television series, which has an accompanying book, is about herbs.

Jane Grigson

With a Foreword by Sophie Grigson

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published 1974

This edition first published by Ebury Press, an imprint of Random Century, 1992

Published in Penguin Books 1993

Copyright Jane Grigson, 1974

This revised edition copyright Sophie Grigson, 1992

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

The illustrations that appear in this book are by: Clare Leighton ()

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-194963-5

For Geoffrey and Sophie

and for my parents in whose house

I first learnt about

good English food

29 February 1788: We gave the company for dinner some fish and oyster sauce, a nice piece of boiled beef, a fine neck of pork roasted and apple sauce, some hashed turkey, mutton steaks, salad, etc., a wild duck roasted, fried rabbits, a plum pudding and some tartlets. Dessert, some olives, nuts, almonds and raisins and apples. The whole company were pleased with their dinner, etc. Considering we had not above three hours notice of their coming we did very well in that short time. All of us were rather hurried on the occasion.

R EV .J AMES W OODFORDE