Eating Sparrows, Yearning for Butter

Most renowned chefs — Jacques Pépin, Daniel Boulud, Thomas Keller, for example — are male and, often, French. But the great food writers are mostly female — Gabrielle Hamilton, Julia Child, M.F.K. Fisher — and  American, with the stunning exception of Elizabeth David, a ravishing observer of people, ingredients and manners, born a Brit in 1913.

These women's personalities blaze across the pages, all of them demanding, resourceful, witty, but David, stylish in many ways and sometimes savage, is the most entertaining of all.

Following a glowing passage in her book, "Summer Cooking," published in 1955, on soups of the Continent, David turned a baleful eye on English equivalents, most grievous to her, the consommé. Granted, a soup that  demands good stock in a lengthy simmer with beaten egg whites, sometimes crushed eggshells, ground meat, diced carrots, celery, caramelized onion, seasonings and, finally, a careful straining to produce an absolutely clear and golden consommé was a risky undertaking in post-war England. Pretensions, if indulged, require skill, and as David noted, culinary skill was not particularly evident. Also, rationing, in force until 1954, did not help. Cookbooks featured recipes for crows, even sparrows, and tinned apricot halves substituted, visually, for fried eggs. ( At the Green Park Hotel on Half Moon Street, a leisurely walk from Buckingham Palace, the entrees were bland and the consommé was thin and “a depressing color,” as David says. But at age 13,  it seemed to me better than school fare in which the pale bones of boiled mutton extended from pools of murky white like shipwrecked galleons.)

As Jill Norman recounts in an introduction to David's "South Wind Through the Kitchen,"  David was born Elizabeth Gwynne, the daughter of a conservative member of Parliament and the granddaughter of a viscount. She had the kind of growing up that included nannies, boarding school and "appalling boiled cod." She was educated in the fashion of her gender and class, worked as a "vendeuse" at the House of Worth in Paris, and after an acting stint she traveled abroad. Then, in Cairo she met an officer in the Indian army and married him. New Delhi failed to delight, however, so she returned to Britain, alone. And there seems to be no further word on this fellow throughout the rest of her days, other than his name attached to hers.

Now, at a time when fresh produce, eggs, butter and various meats were very hard to get, David wrote a cookbook with recipes for sauce béarnaise (butter, egg yolks, fresh herbs), frozen scampi (“the word evidently has some magic for the English public,” David wrote,) and cream of green pea soup (peas in their pods, lettuce leaves, a little ham, onions. And butter. And cream). 

The recipes were read as fairy tales. With the same appeal. To entrance in the time of austerity. As Terrence Conran wrote, she "shot a ray of sunshine through the damp, grey cloud that hung over post-war Britain."

And for sheer fun reading, her stories about restaurants and travel and cooking still entrance.

Her recipes are notably casual and rather inexact, filled with vague measures such as a coffee-cup full, a tea- cup full, a wine-glass full and then, to mystify Americans, the gill, which has a United Kingdom and an American equivalent. Still the recipes look straightforward and are simple and, some, quite original, such as the omelette soufflé with Grand Marnier from "French Country Cooking," published first in 1951, and revised and reprinted again and again until, it states in my copy, 1976.

Here it is: Combine 3 egg yolks with 2 tablespoonfuls sugar. Add a sherry-glass measure of  Grand Marnier. Beat the 3 egg whites to soft peaks. With haste, combine the two mixtures. Into a 10-inch omelette pan, blazing hot, drop a pat of butter. It will melt in a second, so toss in the egg mixture immediately, shake briskly to turn over the browned bottom to the top and serve two people. It takes no more than a minute to cook and plate this creamy, frothy delight. I think it's good with crème anglaise. Just a little.

Many of Elizabeth David's books are available on Amazon, used and in good condition. “At Elizabeth David's Table,” compiled in 2010, is available at the Scoville Memorial Library in Salisbury.