Mediterranean and French provincial cooking
1913–1992 · United Kingdom
Elizabeth David was born in Sussex in 1913 and spent her twenties in France, Italy, and Greece, where she learned to cook from markets rather than manuals. Returning to postwar Britain, where rationing had flattened the national palate, she began writing magazine pieces about Mediterranean food that readers clipped and saved.
A Book of Mediterranean Food (1950) and French Country Cooking (1951) introduced a generation of British cooks to olive oil, garlic, and herbs at a time when such ingredients were scarce. Her prose was exact and unsentimental; she refused to pad a recipe with reassurance, trusting the reader to pay attention.
French Provincial Cooking (1960) remains her masterpiece, and her essays collected in An Omelette and a Glass of Wine show the same appetite for place and memory. She died in London in 1992.
A Provençal beef daube braised with wine, orange peel, and olives — David's antidote to bland postwar cooking.
David's rigorous Niçoise salad — tomatoes, olives, anchovies, and eggs, with no cooked vegetables in sight.
A Provençal vegetable and bean soup finished with a basil, garlic, and cheese pistou stirred in at the table.
Sunday lunch in Chelsea · 1964 · Chelsea, London
An editor's table · 1963 · Manhattan, New York
A table in Provence · 1966 · Provence, France
A harvest lunch in Wiltshire · 1982 · Wiltshire, England
A cookout in Provence · 1987 · Provence, France