A Book of Mediterranean Food

by Elizabeth David

Original publisher: John Lehmann

Date of publication: 1950

ISBN: 1590170032

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Recommended by

Nina Caplan

Wine and food writer

Her manner is invariably peremptory, her recipes occasionally impossible – David, more than almost any other cookery book writer, assumes you can cook. (She also assumes common sense, which is flattering but not always helpful.) And yet – persist, and the food is great, with a whiff of the lazy south of another era, where the bottle of Macon, Beaujolais or Châteauneuf du Pape upended easefully into the Coq au Vin would have been better than most of us can now afford to drink, and the time spent around the table for a single meal would have sufficed to write another book. Even if you don’t want to cook her food, David’s digressions are worth reading – I will remember Senator Couteaux taking a week to catch his hare for Lièvre à la Royale, then substituting the recipe for his usual political column, when all the recipes are forgotten.

Aliza Green

Chef and author

David is a wonderful writer whose romantic vision of sun-kissed Mediterranean food and casual, literary writing style I continue to admire. One of the very first cookbooks I ever read, since my mom purchased a copy when it was first published in 1950.

Annabel Abbs

Novelist, cook and food blogger

Simple recipes, beautifully written. I love the way David, almost single-handedly, restored our love of cooking, eating and food-fantasising, after years of War and food rationing. Her shimmering prose reminded us that good food was a cause for joy.

Karen Anderson

Writer and Blogger of Savour It All

If Jane Austen wrote Sense and Sensibility as a cookbook this is how it would have turned out. Elizabeth David's ability to be concise and straightforward in her instruction is unparalleled.