Food writing, broadcasting, and politics
1924–2009 · United Kingdom
Clement Freud was born in Berlin in 1924, a grandson of Sigmund Freud, and came to Britain as a child. He worked as a chef at the Dorchester, ran a restaurant, and served as a Liberal MP, but he was best known as a broadcaster and a writer.
He wrote a restaurant column and the book Freud on Food (1972), in which eating is treated as a subject for pleasure, common sense, and dry humor. He distrusted pretension in cooking and in writing about it, and his prose is a model of understatement.
He died in 2009. His food writing remains a reminder that authority can be light on its feet.
Slowly stirred eggs cooked with butter to a soft, creamy curd, seasoned only at the end.
Oxtail browned and braised with root vegetables and red wine until the meat slips off the bone.
Buttered bread layered with raisins and baked in a vanilla custard until puffed and golden.
A quiet supper with Clement Freud · 1985 · London, England
A Christmas rehearsal in London · 1972 · London, England
Dinner at Carrier's · 1978 · London, England