A Literary Culinary Journal
A number of rare or newly experienced foods have been claimed to be aphrodisiacs. At one time this quality was even ascribed to the tomato. Reflect on that when you are next preparing the family salad.–Jane Grigson
Jane Grigson, English food writer championed by Elizabeth David as a result of her first book Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery published in 1967 to high acclaim.
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When devising a mixed salad be careful not to overdo the number of ingredients, or chop everything into small pieces, or mash them all up together into one indistinguishable morass;…–Elizabeth David, Summer Cooking
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Poverty rather than wealth gives the good things of life their true significance. Home-made bread rubbed with garlic and sprinkled with olive oil, shared – with a flask of wine – between working people, can be more convivial than any feast.–Patience Gray, Honey from a Weed: Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades and Apulia
Patience Gray was an English food writer who introduced Mediterranean tastes to Britain. She died in March of 2005. More can be read about her in The Guardian’s obituary.
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In the summer there is also holiday cooking. That may well mean food cooked in an unfamiliar kitchen equipped, more than likely, in an impersonal and inadequate fashion by the owners of a house, holiday villa, or caravan hired out for the summer.–Elizabeth David (Summer Cooking, London, 1965)
Elizabeth David, British food writer (1913-1992), who helped change the way Britain saw food.
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Summer cooking implies a sense of immediacy, a capacity to capture the essence of the fleeting moment.–Elizabeth David
Elizabeth David, food writer (1913-1992) who helped to change the way Britain saw food. Many of her books are available in the Penguin classics series.
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“Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating. (pg. 88, “Think Little”)”—Wendell Berry (The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry)
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Food is a subject of conversation more spiritually refreshing even than the weather, for the number of possible remarks about the weather is limited, whereas of food you can talk on and on and on. Moreover, no heat of controversy is induced by mention of the atmospheric conditions (seeing that we are all agreed as to what is a good day and what is a bad one) and where there can be no controversy there can be no intimacy in agreement. But tastes in food differ so sharply…that a pronounced agreement in them is of all bonds a union the most intimate. Thus, if a man hates tapioca pudding he is a good fellow and my friend.–A. A. Milne, “Lunch” (1934)
Alan Alexander Milne was an English author, best known for his book about a teddy bear named Winnie the Pooh.
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I must….descant a little upon the mint-julep, as it is, with the thermometer at 100 degrees F., one of the most delightful and insinuating potations that ever was invented, and may be drunk with equal satisfaction when the thermometer is as low as 70 degrees.–Captain Frederick Marryat’s diary (1838)
Captain Frederick Marryat (July 10, 1792 – August 9, 1848) was an English Royal Navy officer, novelist, and a contemporary and acquaintance of Charles Dickens, noted as an early pioneer of the sea story. He is now known for a widely used system of maritime flag signaling.
Click here for a mint julep recipe.
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He who receives his friends and gives no personal attention to the meal which is being prepared for them, is not worthy of having friends.–Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (April 1, 1775 – February 2, 1826) The Physiology of Taste
Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, a French lawyer, magistrate, and politician, wrote one of the most celebrated works on food, Physiologie du goût (The Physiology of Taste), which was published only months before his death.
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[A Comice pear is] sweetly and subtly perfumed…so soft it is best eaten with a spoon, a tenderness more appealing to gourmets than to those who have to pick, ship, handle and store it in constant fear of ruinous spoilage.–Waverley Root, Food
Waverly Root, author of Food: An Authoritative and Visual History and Dictionary of the Foods of the World, was an American journalist and writer, best known for the book The Food of France published originally in 1958, and is still in print today. He died in 1982. Click here to read his obituary.
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Meet Jonell Galloway, a freelance writer and editor specialized in French cuisine. 
