Writing at the Kitchen Table: The Authorized Biography of Elizabeth David

`Writing at the Kitchen Table' is the `Authorized Biography of Elizabeth David' by Artemis Cooper. Biographer Cooper, by great sympathy with his subject, with access to great sources, and by superior narrative has given us a superior biography of one of the three great female English language culinary writers of the twentieth century.It is revealing to compare the lives and careers of Ms. David with the other two greats, Julia Child and M.F.K. Fisher. She stands roughly between Child, the great teacher and Fisher, the great gourmand and explorer of appetites. Her recipe writing was less pedagogical and more analytical than Child, and less subjective but more attentive to details of other peoples works than Fisher.In their personal lives, it is interesting to see that while David and Fisher were certifiably beautiful women through much of their lives, their success with husbands was poor to dismal by the standards of their day and ours. In contrast, the very tall and warbly voiced Julia Child was attractive by the same standards one may have used with Eleanor Roosevelt, yet her family life with husband, Paul Child was one of the world's great enduring love stories.A fascinating parallel with Child and David is that they both served in their country's intelligence organizations overseas during World War II. While Child was with the OSS in India and Burma, David was with British Intelligence in Cairo, where she landed at the beginning of the war after a literally hair raising flight from the Italians and Germans in 1940, across the Mediterranean just as the Germans were invading Greece. Also, Ms. Child and Ms. David both met their future husbands during the war.One small problem I have with the biographies of both Ms. David and Ms. Fisher is that neither does a really good job of identify the spark that ignited their interest in food. Unlike these two, Julia Child's epiphany is obvious when she found herself with a husband who liked to eat well, and she did not really know how to cook. Necessity took over and Julia dove into the subject with what became a lifelong passion.With Elizabeth David, the interest seems to creep up on her as a result of really dismal food in her nursery as a child, followed by the revelation of very good food while living and studying in Paris and Munich. While Ms. Fisher started writing before World War II, Ms. Child and Ms. David both started their careers around 1950, although Ms. David was first published `Mediterranean Food' seven years before Julia Child et al's `Mastering the Art of French Cooking'. In fact, by 1962, after publishing `French Provincial Food' and `Italian Food', Ms. David was quite the authority compared to newcomer Child.This is another interesting parallel in that the most famous works from all three authors came early in their careers. While Ms. Fisher's greatest fame came in the 1960's, it was largely based on reissues of works she did in the 1940s. And, neither Ms. Child nor Ms. David ever topped the popularity of the works in their first five years.Oddly, Elizabeth David's very best work of scholarship was probably published near the end of her career, and it is probably her least known major work. This is `English Bread and Yeast Cookery', which lead to her achieving her highest official recognition's from the Crown and from English intellectual society. What is surprising is that this great scholarly work may have as much in common with Rachael Carson's `Silent Spring' as it does with Peter Reinhart's books on bread baking. Along with great information on home and commercial practice, it was a revelation of how poor English commercial bread baking could be.In addition to her unfortunate romantic live and her James Bondean experiences at the opening of World War II, Ms. David's life in general seems to have been less happy than that of Ms. Fisher and far less happy than the `too good to be believed' life of Ms. Child. Ms. David's father died young and her mother did not have a great deal of interest in her four daughters. Early in life, Elizabeth made up for her family's alienation by living beyond her means, with the knowledge that her family's estate would bail her out of her debts.Her relations with her family and many friends seemed to be perpetually bumpy. Elizabeth could be both very reserved and very prickly, with a blindness to seeing the other point of view in a lot of cases, leading to more than one very long term alienation from former friends. She was, for example, very difficult to interview and had a great aversion to seeing her name in print in contexts other than as author of her own works.Her business dealings tended to the difficult as well, although not entirely through her doing. Her relations with publishers of books and magazines seemed to be especially difficult, leading to serious legal entanglements. Her problems with the cookware store, `Elizabeth David, LTD', of which she was just one of five shareholders were largely her own doing, as she ignored good business sense and ran things largely to suit her personal tastes. Then, she took serious offense when her business partners brought in a manager with good marketing skills.While Elizabeth David's influence was not great in the United States, it did have a great effect on the general direction of American cuisine in her friendship with American expatriate, Richard Olney and their joint influence on Chez Panisse movers and shakers, Alice Waters and Jeremiah Tower, plus the tiny San Francisco eatery, Zuni Café, soon to be the second best known San Francisco eatery, after Panisse.This book was more enjoyable to read than the recent Fisher biography, `Poet of the Appetites', but not quite as much fun as the Child biography, `Appetite for Life'.If you consider yourself a card-carrying foodie, you should read this book.

The unauthorized biography would have been a lot racier... but Artemis Cooper has served up a light, sometimes frothy, literary dish based on her friendship with Elizabeth David and her acquaintance with many of the characters in Elizabeth David's life.Elizabeth David is one of my favourite writers on food. I use her recipes often and feel a kind of kinship with her. Her life was nothing if not adventurous, but she was often unlucky (and unwise) in love, and she experienced prolonged periods of unhappiness.In her maturity, she was an authoritative, not say formidable, presence who could make restaurateurs quail. Maddeningly opinionated, she laid down the culinary law, especially as regarded dishes she claimed as her own.Compared to the flexibility and inventiveness of modern cookery writers, Elizabeth David's recipes now seem old-fashioned; but she was from a different era -- and that is what makes her so fascinating. She practically invented modern British cookery. God bless her.

My mental picture of Elizabeth David was of a fastidious purist, living in spartan elegance with a summer home in Provence and a huge garden. I saw a kindly, tolerant, gracious lady.Well--not exactly. Ms. Cooper does a very even-handed, non-obtrusive job. I was somewhat put off by the "authorized" biography part, thinking it might be only what the family saw fit to print. Happily, Ms. Cooper had a free rein to use any and all materials. The brief section dealing with Mrs. David's childhood sets the scene of a very well connected family who are not anyone's idea of favorite relatives. I didn't get a clear picture of Elizabeth, and wondered if perhaps the author didn't depend too much on one person's casual comment to attempt to define a large part of Elizabeth's character. She did not seem like a particularly happy child. When she was 17, she embraced life and never looked back. By turns an actress, student, stage manager; she had very little direction and non-existant discretion. She had a series of lovers, spent WWII very precariously mostly because of her own poor planning and finally when she was in her late 20's found she could write passionately about food--and the rest is history. Though the author is sympathetic, Mrs. David was not a pleasant person. She was egocentric, morbidly suspicious, overbearing and very conscious of class (her own). But was was an excellent teacher and drew acolytes to her all of her life. She was beautiful and not particularly discriminating so had a romantic life that was hectic, but not particularly fulfilling. I admired her scholarly dedication and her lifelong disdain for the second rate effort. There is no question she deserved all her success. She worked at it and earned it.An excellent read you won't forget. For anyone interested in food or food writing, this is one you will want for your library. For general interest readers, it is well done about an interesting subject.

Loved it. Artemis cooper is a brilliant biographer This is my second book by her.

Having previous knowledge of the subject (such as Lisa Chaney's earlier book) and having met many of the people mentioned in this new biography I was very thrilled to have previous gaps in my knowledge filled.Elizabeth David's life if quite fully covered in all its many and various aspects, incidental to the main culinary aspects. She lived in the ever changing periods from Edwardian England to the late twentieth century. The book brings to life what it was like to live through those changes and will be helpful to future historians studying the last century. Great fun and easy to read.