PENGUIN BOOKS

FRENCH COUNTRY COOKING

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 David’s 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 A final anthology of unpublished recipes, uncollected articles and essays entitled Is There a Nutmeg in the House? was published in 2000. This was followed in 2003 by Elizabeth David’s Christmas. In 2010, to mark 50 years since publication of Mediterranean Food, Penguin published At Elizabeth David’s Table, a collection of her best recipes and articles, illustrated for the first time with photographs.

In 1973 her contribution to gastronomy was recognized with the award of the first André Simon Memorial Fund Book Award. An OBE followed in 1976, and in 1977 she was made a chevalier de l’ordre du Mérite 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.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION (REVISED)

THIS book was written and published at a time when food rationing was still in full force, and of necessity contained suggestions as to what ingredients might be substituted for quantities of bacon, cream, eggs, meat stock and so on. A list of stores to keep handy and where to buy them was also included, and a few recipes for dealing with tinned foods.

Such advice no longer seems necessary, so these chapters have been eliminated, as well as a few of the longer and more elaborate recipes.

I am anxious to stress the fact that this little collection gives no more than an indication of the immense diversity and range of French regional cookery. It is a subject of such scope that half a dozen large volumes of recipes would scarcely exhaust it. Indeed, it would be almost impossible ever to compile a complete collection, because in France regional cookery is very much alive, and therefore perpetually evolving. As modern transport, changing agricultural methods, and new types of kitchen stoves and utensils make old recipes out of date, so resourceful housewives and enterprising chefs invent new dishes to meet the altered circumstances and to satisfy their own creative instincts where cookery is concerned. But many of these new dishes will be based on the old traditional ones; the ingredients used will be those native to the district; the local flavour will be preserved. And so it comes about that for the collector every visit to France will produce some new dish, and those interested enough will find there is always something new to learn about the engrossing subject of French cookery.

E. D.

TABLE OF EQUIVALENT GAS AND ELECTRIC OVEN TEMPERATURES

INTRODUCTION

A certain amount of nonsense is talked about the richness of the food to be found in all French homes. It is true that the standard is much higher than that of most English households, but it will not, I hope, be taken as an ungracious criticism to say that the chances are that a food-conscious foreigner staying for any length of time with a French middle-class family would find the proportion of rather tough entrecôtes, rolled and stuffed roast veal, and sautéd chicken exasperatingly high. For parties and festivals there would be more elaborately cooked fish and poultry, separate vegetable courses and wonderful open fruit tarts; but he would not find many dishes were cooked in cream, wine and garlic – it is bad for the foie, he would very likely be told. Those who care to look for it, however, will find the justification of France’s culinary reputation in the provinces, at the riverside inns, in unknown cafés along the banks of the Burgundy canal, patronized by the men who sail the great petrol and timber barges to and from Marseille, great eaters and drinkers most of them, in the hospitable farmhouses of the Loire and the Dordogne, of Normandy and the Auvergne, in sea-port bistros frequented by fishermen, sailors, ship-chandlers and port officials; and nowadays also in cafés routiers, the lorry-drivers’ restaurants.

In such places the most interesting food in France is to be found, naturally, because the shopkeepers, the lawyer, the doctor, the curé, the gendarme and even those stony-faced post-office officials are exceedingly addicted to the pleasures of the table; and, being thrifty as well, you may be sure they know where the cheapest and best of everything is to be obtained. The peasant farmers are prosperous, and not for nothing are they known as the thriftiest people in Europe. Every scrap of food produced is made use of in some way or another, in fact in the best way possible, so it is in the heart of the country that one may become acquainted with the infinite variety of charcuterie, the sausages, pickled pork and bacon, smoked hams, terrines, preserved goose, pâtés, rillettes, and andouillettes, the cheeses and creams, the fruits preserved in potent local liqueurs, the fresh garden vegetables, pulled up before they are faded and grown old, and served shining with farmhouse butter, the galettes and pancakes made from country flour, the mushrooms, cèpes, morilles and truffes gathered in the forest, the mountain hares, pigeons, partridges and roe-buck, the matelotes of pike, carp and eel and the fried trout straight from the river, the sustaining vegetable soups enriched with wine, garlic, bacon and sausages, the thousand and one shell-fish soups and stews, the fritures du golfe, the risottos aux fruits de mer of France’s lovely prodigal coast, from Brittany to Biarritz and from Spain to Monte Carlo.

Although there is not such a profusion of raw materials in England, we still have much greater gastronomic resources than the national cookery would lead one to suppose.

Rationing, the disappearance of servants, and the bad and expensive meals served in restaurants, have led Englishwomen to take a far greater interest in food than was formerly considered polite; and large numbers of people with small farms in the country produce their own home-cured bacon, ham and sausages; personal supervision of the kitchen garden induces a less indifferent attitude to the fate of spring vegetables; those who have churned their own butter, fed their chickens and geese, cherished their fruit trees, skinned and cleaned their own hares, are in no mood to see their efforts wasted. Town dwellers, who take trouble over their marketing, choose their meat and fish carefully and keep a good store cupboard, are equally interested in seeing that their care is repaid in good and interesting meals.

It is for such people that I have collected the recipes in this book, most of which derive from French regional and peasant cookery, which, at its best, is the most delicious in the world; cookery which uses raw materials to the greatest advantage without going to the absurd lengths of the complicated and so-called Haute Cuisine, the pompeuses bagatelles de la cuisine masquée, considered the height of good taste and refined living during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nor is the Technicolor cooking which has partially taken its place in any way an improvement. Good cooking is honest, sincere and simple, and by this I do not mean to imply that you will find in this, or indeed any other book, the secret of turning out first-class food in a few minutes with no trouble. Good food is always a trouble and its preparation should be regarded as a labour of love, and this book is intended for those who actually and positively enjoy the labour involved in entertaining their friends and providing their families with first-class food. Even more than long hours in the kitchen, fine meals require ingenious organization and experience which is a pleasure to acquire. A highly developed shopping sense is important, so is some knowledge of the construction of a menu with a view to the food in season, the manner of cooking, the texture and colour of the dishes to be served in relation to each other.

The proper composition of a meal being a source of continual anxiety to the inexperienced, I have thought it would perhaps be helpful to include a short chapter on the subject; and as there is no French cooking without wine, its use in the kitchen, unfamiliar to many, is explained in a separate chapter.

The respective merits of Haute Cuisine, Cuisine Bourgeoise, regional and peasant and good plain, Italian and German, Scandinavian, Greek, Arab or Chinese food are less important than the spirit in which cooking is approached; a devoted, a determined, spirit, but not, it is to be hoped, one of martyrdom.

1950                                                          E. D.