French Provincial Cooking - Elizabeth David [1]
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,
Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph 1960
First published in the United States of America by
Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc. 1962
Published in Penguin Books (U.K.) 1964
Published in Penguin Books (U.S.A.) 1964
Published with revisions 1967, 1970
This edition with a new foreword by Julia Child
published in Penguin Books (U.S.A.) 1999
10
Copyright ⓒ Elizabeth David, 1960, 1962, 1967, 1970 Foreword copyright ⓒ Julia Child, 1999 All rights reserved
eISBN : 978-1-101-50123-8
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To
P. H.
with love
Acknowledgements
So many people have helped me in so many ways with the compiling and the production of this book—some with advice and material, others with technical assistance, typing, indexing, proof-reading—that the acknowledgements which I should like to make to all these friends would fill a number of pages.
But I have only a limited space, so I must restrict myself, first of all, to thanking Miss Audrey Withers, for so many years editor of Vogue, for making it possible for me to go to France on several journeys to collect material for cookery articles subsequently published in the magazine. It is these articles, with a number published in House and Garden between 1956 and 1959, which form the nucleus of this book.
Other material and recipes republished here first appeared in The Sunday Times, Harper’s Bazaar, The Wine and Food Society Quarterly, Harrods Food News and Wine, edited by T. A. Layton.
M. André Simon very kindly gave me permission to reprint an article by Mrs. Belloc Lowndes which first appeared in The Wine and Food Society Quarterly, and Messrs. A. D. Peters to include an extract from Marcel Boulestin’s Myself, My Two Countries, published by Cassell & Co. Messrs. Martin Secker & Warburg have also kindly allowed me to reprint a passage from Maurice Goudeket’s Close to Colette, and Mr. Vivian Rowe has generously permitted me to reproduce an excerpt from Return to Normandy, published by Messrs. Evans Brothers.
Lastly, it would be ungrateful of me to miss this opportunity of thanking my friend Doreen Thornton for driving me, with much patience and care, on many rather arduous journeys around and across France in search of good food and interesting regional recipes.
Introduction
STAYING in Toulouse a few years ago, I bought a little cookery book on a stall in the marché aux puces held every Sunday morning in the Cathedral Square. It was a tattered little volume, and its cover, attracted me. In faded pinks and blues, it depicts an enormously fat and contented-looking cook in white muslin cap, spotted blouse and blue apron, smiling smugly to herself as she scatters herbs on a gigot of mutton. Beside her are a great loaf of butter, a head of garlic and a wooden salt box, and in the foreground is a table laid with a white cloth and four places, a basket of bread, a cruet and two carafes of wine.
The promise of the cover was, indeed, fulfilled in the pages of this delightful little book, called Secrets de la Bonne Table, 120 Recettes inédites recueillies dans les provinces de France. The author, Benjamin Renaudet (date of publication not disclosed, but probably about 1900), had collected genuine recipes from country housewives, gourmet doctors, lawyers and senators, from gamekeepers and their wives, from landladies of seaside pensions, from the notebooks of family and friends. The dishes described are not spectacular, rich or highly