4 Recipe Booklets.
1. Syllabubs and Fruit Fools. 2. English Potted Meats and Fish Pates. 3. Dried Herbs, Aromatics and Condiments. 4. The Baking of an English Loaf.
All booklets 150x112 mm. #1. A Second edition of 1971. 20p with a blue water stain running thro' all the pages, not too bad. #2. A first edition n/d but copyrighted 1968. 20p and unblemished. #3. A first edition n/d but copyrighted 1969. 20p. A nice copy with a very small stain dot on the front cover. #4. A first edition n/d but copyrighted 1969. 24p. A nice clean copy. Overall four very nice items and very scarce as a full set.
- Elizabeth David CBE (born Elizabeth Gwynne, 26 December 1913 – 22 May 1992) was a British cookery writer who, in the mid-20th century, strongly influenced the revitalisation of the art of home cookery with articles and books about European cuisines and traditional British dishes. Her prose style was at once imperious, informative, passionate and above all evocative. Her books have truly inspired generations to step into the kitchen heat and find that passion for themselves. She wrote in Vogue in 1960 after visiting Cavaillon, in Provence, on market day. "Here you can buy everything for a picnic lunch beautiful sprawling ripe tomatoes, a Banon cheese wrapped in chestnut leaves, Arles sausages, pate, black olives, butter cut from a towering monolith". David opened a kitchen utensil shop with friends (with whom she later, inevitably, fell out) at 64 Bourne St, London SW1, selling the artisan cooking pots and equipment she loved and that everyone else later copied. Its launch in 1965 was headline news. She was responsible for Le Creuset introducing its traditional orange coloured cast-iron pans in blue - inspired by the colour of her Gauloise cigarette packet. These four booklets were published at various dates during the 60's and 70's and sold at Bourne St. The shop continued to trade under her name after she left it in 1973. Also at the same time, working with the food photographer Anthony Denney, she changed the way recipes were presented in magazines. No studio shots of mashed potato masquerading as ice-cream as was the practice then; the photographs are simply of what she had cooked. Her life was remarkable and her legacy astonishing. Her brilliant writing was the outcome of racketing around the Mediterranean, travelling, drinking and eating alone in Italy, and holing herself up in Ross-on-Wye with another man while her husband was in India. By all accounts she could be disagreeable, but that shouldn't put anyone off her books. And now that we know how extraordinarily racy her life was there's even more reason not to forget her.
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Ephemera category
ref number:
11172