Some relish with roast lamb?

Elizabeth David chronicles Britain's fascination with pepper and pickles ...

Among the leading lights of culinary literature in the last century, few shone as brightly as Elizabeth David.With nine books under her belt and an enormous amount of journalism,she achieved a most remarkable feat: she brought into English homes,which still reeled under the burden of war-time rationing when she started appearing in print,the flavour of the "sun and sea and olive trees." Thanks to her exertions,her compatriots discovered the charms of the food of the European countries around the Mediterranean,notably France and Italy,and began to introduce in their daily cooking a host of herbs and spices.

I bought my first Elizabeth David book,Mediterranean Food,in the mid-1960 s and instantly became an addict.She was no mere compiler of recipes or just a reviewer of restaurants.She offered readers chunks of culinary history,anecdotes about obscure chefs and gourmets and vivid descriptions of open-air markets and visits to farms and vineyards in search of rare cheeses,wines and cold cuts.I devoured everything she published,but missing from my collection was Spices,Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen even though it was reprinted thrice after its publication in 1970.Now,Grub Street,a publisher of cookery books in London,has issued it in hard cover.

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