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109-811: Velho indicated that the sources agreed that the armada contained four ships, but there was disagreement about the names. These were the other three ships according to him: The provisions of the convoy were based on the expectation that the voyage would last three years; merchandise intended for the Indian market was also brought along. This merchandise included wash basins, clothes, sugar, honey, corals, glass beads and trinkets, and turned out to be neither adequate in quality nor in quantity for its purpose. Daily rations were calculated to be 1.5 pounds biscuit , 1 lb beef or 0.5 lb of pork, 2.5 pints water, 1.25 pints wine (customary, also against scurvy ), plus 0.3 gill of vinegar, and 0.6 gill of oil. On fasting days meat

218-600: A snack food , and are, in general, made with wheat flour or oats, and sweetened with sugar or honey. Varieties may contain chocolate, fruit, jam, nuts, ginger, or even be used to sandwich other fillings. The digestive biscuit and rich tea have a strong identity in British culture as the traditional accompaniment to a cup of tea and are regularly eaten as such. Some tea drinkers dunk biscuits in tea, allowing them to absorb liquid and soften slightly before consumption. Chocolate digestives , rich tea, and Hobnobs were ranked

327-484: A civilian convoy to Egypt. Able to speak excellent French and good German, David secured a job in the naval cipher office in Alexandria . She was quickly rescued from temporary refugee accommodation, having met an old English friend who had an "absurdly grandiose" flat in the city and invited her to keep house for him. She and Cowan amicably went their separate ways, and she moved into the grand flat. She engaged

436-601: A commercial return. A new manager was brought in to run the shop and David fought against many of his changes, but she was always in the minority against her fellow directors. The stress of disagreements over company policy—and the deaths of her sister Diana in March 1971 and her mother in June 1973—contributed to health problems and she suffered from chronic fatigue and swollen, ulcerous legs. Gradually her business partners found her commercial approach unsustainable, and in 1973 she left

545-481: A cook, Kyriacou, a Greek refugee, whose eccentricities (sketched in a chapter of Is There a Nutmeg in the House? ) did not prevent him from producing magnificent food: "The flavour of that octopus stew, the rich wine dark sauce and the aroma of mountain herbs was something not easily forgotten." In 1942 she caught an infection that affected her feet. She spent some weeks in hospital and felt obliged to give up her job in

654-424: A dedicated section in most European supermarkets, often in the same aisle as sweet biscuits. The exception to savoury biscuits is the sweetmeal digestive known as the " Hovis biscuit ", which, although slightly sweet, is still classified as a cheese biscuit. Savoury biscuits sold in supermarkets are sometimes associated with a certain geographical area, such as Scottish oatcakes or Cornish wafer biscuits. In general,

763-491: A dense, treaclely (molasses-based) spice cake or bread. As it was so expensive to make, early ginger biscuits were a cheap form of using up the leftover bread mix. With the combination of knowledge spreading from Al-Andalus , and then the Crusades and subsequent spread of the spice trade to Europe, the cooking techniques and ingredients of Arabia spread into Northern Europe. By mediaeval times, biscuits were made from

872-399: A failed business venture. What remained of the spark in the relationship soon died, and they were living separately by 1948. Veronica Nicholson, a friend with connections in the publishing trade, persuaded David to continue writing, with the aim that she write a book. She showed some of David's work to Anne Scott-James , the editor of the British edition of Harper's Bazaar , who thought

981-775: A few Hindus in Cachar caught an Englishman eating biscuits with tea, which caused an uproar. The information reached the Hindus of Sylhet and a small rebellion occurred. In response to this, companies started to advertise their bread as "machine-made" and "untouched by (Muslim) hand" to tell Hindus that the breads were "safe for consumption". This incident is mentioned in Bipin Chandra Pal 's autobiography and he mentions how culinary habits of Hindus gradually changed and biscuits and loaves eventually became increasingly popular. Most modern biscuits can trace their origins back to either

1090-519: A further four that she had planned and worked on. David's influence on British cooking extended to professional as well as domestic cooks, and chefs and restaurateurs of later generations such as Terence Conran , Simon Hopkinson , Prue Leith , Jamie Oliver , Tom Parker Bowles and Rick Stein have acknowledged her importance to them. In the US, cooks and writers including Julia Child , Richard Olney and Alice Waters have written of her influence. David

1199-463: A love of French literature and a fluency in the language that remained with her throughout her life. She lodged with a Parisian family, whose fanatical devotion to the pleasures of the table she portrayed to comic effect in her French Provincial Cooking (1960). Nevertheless, she acknowledged in retrospect that the experience had been the most valuable part of her time in Paris: "I realized in what way

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1308-531: A month for food ingredients and from time to time £100 for research trips to France. David visited several areas of France, completing her research for her next book, French Provincial Cooking , which was "the culmination and synthesis of a decade of work and thought". Published in 1960, it is, according to Cooper in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , the book for which she would be best remembered. David's agent negotiated contracts with

1417-520: A new publisher, Michael Joseph, and a new illustrator, Juliet Renny. Reviews of the new book were as complimentary as those for its predecessors. The Times Literary Supplement wrote, " French Provincial Cooking needs to be read rather than referred to quickly. It discourses at some length on the type and origin of the dishes popular in various French regions, as well as the culinary terms, herbs and kitchen equipment used in France. But those who can give

1526-641: A patent for a chocolate-coated biscuit . Along with local farm produce of meat and cheese, many regions of the world have their own distinct style of biscuit due to the historic prominence of this form of food. Biscuits and loaves were introduced in Bengal during the British colonial period and became popular within the Sylheti Muslim community . However, the middle-class Hindus of Cachar and Sylhet were very suspicious of biscuits and breads as they believed they were baked by Muslims. On one occasion,

1635-454: A relationship with an old flame from India, Peter Higgins, a divorced stockbroker; it was the beginning of the happiest period of her life. She spent the following months writing the book, recreating the recipes to work out the correct measurements. She felt less emotionally connected to Italy than with Greece and southern France and found the writing "uncommonly troublesome", although "as recipe after recipe came out ... I realized how much I

1744-524: A seventeenth-century manor house with extensive, early twentieth-century additions by Detmar Blow . Her father, despite having a weak heart, insisted on pursuing a demanding political career, becoming Conservative MP for Eastbourne , and a junior minister in Bonar Law 's government. Overwork, combined with his vigorous recreational pastimes, chiefly racing, riding, and womanising, brought about his death in 1924, aged 51. The widowed Stella Gwynne

1853-554: A shop selling kitchen equipment, at 46 Bourne Street, Pimlico . The partners were spurred on by the closure of a professional kitchenware shop in Soho on the retirement of its owner, and the recent success of Terence Conran 's Habitat shops, which sold among much else imported kitchen equipment for which there was evidently a market. Among her customers were Albert and Michel Roux , who shopped there for equipment that they would otherwise have had to buy in France. David, who selected

1962-565: A similar hard, baked product. The difference between the secondary Dutch word and that of Latin origin is that, whereas the koekje is a cake that rises during baking, the biscuit, which has no raising agent , in general does not (see gingerbread / ginger biscuit ), except for the expansion of heated air during baking. Another cognate Dutch form is beschuit , which is a circular and brittle grain product usually covered by savoury or sweet toppings and eaten at breakfast. When continental Europeans began to emigrate to colonial North America,

2071-704: A skillet meal. The collection Sayings of the Desert Fathers mentions that Anthony the Great (who lived in the 4th century AD) ate biscuits and the text implies that it was a popular food among monks of the time and region. At the time of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the daily allowance on board a Royal Navy ship was one pound of biscuit plus one gallon of beer. Samuel Pepys in 1667 first regularised naval victualling with varied and nutritious rations. Royal Navy hardtack during Queen Victoria 's reign

2180-591: A slow oven. This term was then adapted into English in the 14th century during the Middle Ages , in the Middle English word bisquite , to represent a hard, twice-baked product (see the German Zwieback ). It finally evolved into biscuit to follow the modern french spelling. The Dutch language from around 1703 had adopted the word koekje ('little cake') to have a similar meaning for

2289-531: A small boat to Italy, where their boat was confiscated. They reached Greece, where they were nearly trapped by the German invasion in 1941 , but escaped to Egypt, where they parted. She then worked for the British government, running a library in Cairo. While there she married, but she and her husband separated soon after and subsequently divorced. In 1946 David returned to England, where food rationing imposed during

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2398-541: A sweetened, spiced paste of breadcrumbs and then baked (e.g., gingerbread), or from cooked bread enriched with sugar and spices and then baked again. King Richard I of England (aka Richard the Lionheart) left for the Third Crusade (1189–92) with "biskit of muslin", which was a mixed corn compound of barley , rye , and bean flour. As the making and quality of bread had been controlled to this point, so were

2507-590: A week's break, but were stranded in the town by the season's inclement weather . Frustrated by the poor food provided by the hotel, she was encouraged by Lassalle to put her thoughts on paper. Hardly knowing what I was doing ... I sat down and started to work out an agonized craving for the sun and a furious revolt against that terrible cheerless, heartless food by writing down descriptions of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cooking. Even to write words like apricot, olives and butter, rice and lemons, oil and almonds, produced assuagement. Later I came to realize that in

2616-515: A year, Tony David was posted to India. His wife followed him there in January 1946, but she found life as the wife of an officer of the British Raj tedious, the social life dull, and the food generally "frustrating". Later in life she came to appreciate the cuisine more, and wrote about a few Indian dishes and recipes in her articles and books. In June 1946, she suffered severe sinusitis and

2725-631: Is "any of various hard or crisp dry baked product" similar to the American English terms cracker or cookie , or "a small quick bread made from dough that has been rolled out and cut or dropped from a spoon". In a number of other European languages, terms derived from the Latin bis coctus refer instead to yet another baked product, similar to the sponge cake ; e.g. Spanish bizcocho , German Biskuit , Russian бисквит ( biskvit ), and Polish biszkopt . In modern Italian usage,

2834-414: Is eating Mediterranean food in the absence of Mediterranean earth and air", he finished his review by saying that the book "deserves to become the familiar companion of all who seek uninhibited excitement in the kitchen". The success of the book led to offers of work from The Sunday Times —for which she was paid an advance of 60 guineas — Go , a travel magazine owned by the newspaper, and Wine and Food ,

2943-785: Is now used less frequently, usually with imported brands of biscuits or in the Maritimes ; however, the Canadian Christie Biscuits referred to crackers. The British meaning is at the root of the name of the United States' most prominent maker of cookies and crackers, the National Biscuit Company, now called Nabisco . [REDACTED] Media related to Biscuits at Wikimedia Commons Elizabeth David Elizabeth David CBE (born Elizabeth Gwynne , 26 December 1913 – 22 May 1992)

3052-980: The Azores before he returned to Portugal in early September 1499. São Gabriel is depicted in the 2011 Indian film , Vasco da Gama . Biscuit A biscuit , in many English-speaking countries, including Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa but not Canada or the US, is a flour-based baked and shaped food item. Biscuits are typically hard, flat, and unleavened . They are usually sweet and may be made with sugar , chocolate , icing , jam , ginger , or cinnamon . They can also be savoury, similar to crackers . Types of biscuit include biscotti , sandwich biscuits , digestive biscuits , ginger biscuits , shortbread biscuits, chocolate chip cookies , chocolate-coated marshmallow treats , Anzac biscuits , and speculaas . In most of North America, nearly all hard sweet biscuits are called " cookies " and savoury biscuits are called "crackers", while

3161-835: The Cape of Good Hope , the armada anchored at the Aguada de São Brás ( Mossel Bay ) where the supply ship was broken up and its contents distributed on the others. The three ships sailed further North along the African coast to Malindi , East Africa. After crossing the Indian Ocean they reached the harbor of Calicut at the Malabar coast in India on May 20, 1498. The return crossing of the Indian Ocean took over three months and many of

3270-465: The Strait of Messina when Italy entered the war on 10 June. They were suspected of spying and were interned. After 19 days in custody in various parts of Italy, they were allowed to cross the border into Yugoslavia , which at that point remained neutral and non-combatant. They had lost almost everything they owned—the boat, money, manuscripts, notebooks, and David's cherished collection of recipes. With

3379-546: The ersatz : "anyone depraved enough to invent a dish consisting of a wedge of steam-heated bread spread with tomato paste and a piece of synthetic Cheddar can call it a pizza." While running the shop, David wrote another full-length book, Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen (1970). It was her first book in a decade and the first of a projected series on English cookery to be called "English Cooking, Ancient and Modern". She had decided to concentrate on

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3488-478: The 16th century, where they were sold in monastery pharmacies and town square farmers markets. Gingerbread became widely available in the 18th century. The Industrial Revolution in Britain sparked the formation of businesses in various industries, and the British biscuit firms of McVitie's , Carr's , Huntley & Palmers , and Crawfords were all established by 1850. Chocolate and biscuits became products for

3597-503: The British, Australians, South Africans, New Zealanders, Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, Singaporeans, Nigerians, Kenyans, and Irish use the British meaning of "biscuit" for the sweet biscuit. The terms biscuit and cookie are used interchangeably, depending on the region and the speaker, with biscuits usually referring to hard, sweet biscuits (such as digestives, Nice, Bourbon creams, etc.) and cookies for soft baked goods (i.e. chocolate chip cookies). In Canada, biscuit

3706-464: The Egyptian fellahin dish of black beans with olive oil and lemon and hard-boiled eggs—these things were not only attractive but also cheap. Cooper comments on this period of David's life, "Pictures of her at the time show a quintessential librarian, dressed in a dark cardigan over a white shirt with a prim little collar buttoned up to the neck: but at night, dressed in exotic spangled caftans, she

3815-533: The England of 1947, those were dirty words I was putting down. When her husband returned from India in 1947, David immediately separated from Lassalle and resumed the role of wife. With the aid of Stella Gwynne, David and her husband bought a house in Chelsea , which remained her home for the rest of her life. Tony David proved ineffectual in civilian life, unable to find a suitable job; he ran up debts, partly from

3924-522: The English kitchen." Freya Stark, reviewing for The Observer , remarked, "Mrs David ... may be counted among the benefactors of humanity." In The Sunday Times , Evelyn Waugh named Italian Food as one of the two books that had given him the most pleasure in 1954. By the time she completed Italian Food , Lehmann's publishing firm had been closed down by its parent company, and David found herself under contract to Macdonald, another imprint within

4033-463: The Mediterranean might carry more weight. She submitted the revised typescript to John Lehmann , a publisher more associated with poetry than cookery; he accepted it and agreed to an advance payment of £100. A Book of Mediterranean Food was published in June 1950. A Book of Mediterranean Food was illustrated by John Minton ; writers including Cyril Ray and John Arlott commented that

4142-557: The Second World War remained in force. Dismayed by the contrast between the bad food served in Britain and the simple, excellent food to which she had become accustomed in France, Greece and Egypt, she began to write magazine articles about Mediterranean cooking. They attracted favourable attention, and in 1950, at the age of 36, she published A Book of Mediterranean Food . Her recipes called for ingredients such as aubergines , basil, figs, garlic, olive oil and saffron, which at

4251-647: The UK's top three favourite dunking biscuits in 2009. In a non-dunking poll the Chocolate Hobnob was ranked first with custard creams coming third. Savoury biscuits or crackers (such as cream crackers , water biscuits , oatcakes , or crisp breads ) are usually plainer and commonly eaten with cheese following a meal. Many savoury biscuits also contain additional ingredients for flavour or texture, such as poppy seeds , onion or onion seeds, cheese (such as cheese melts), and olives. Savoury biscuits also usually have

4360-480: The ageing writer Norman Douglas , about whom she later wrote extensively. He inspired her love of the Mediterranean, encouraged her interest in good food, and taught her to "search out the best, insist on it, and reject all that was bogus and second-rate". Cooper describes him as David's most important mentor. David and Cowan finally left Antibes in May 1940, sailing to Corsica and then towards Sicily . They had reached

4469-479: The change in direction of the magazine did not suit the style of her column. She joined the weekly publications The Spectator , Sunday Dispatch and The Sunday Telegraph . Her books were now reaching a wide public, having been reprinted in paperback by the mass-market publisher Penguin Books , where they sold more than a million copies between 1955 and 1985. Her work also had an impact on British food culture:

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4578-481: The cipher office. She then moved to Cairo, where she was asked to set up and run a reference library for the British Ministry of Information . The library was open to everyone and was much in demand by journalists and other writers. Her circle of friends in this period included Alan Moorehead , Freya Stark , Bernard Spencer , Patrick Kinross , Olivia Manning and Lawrence Durrell . At her tiny flat in

4687-531: The city, she employed Suleiman, a Sudanese suffragi (a cook-housekeeper). She recalled: Suleiman performed minor miracles with two Primus stoves and an oven which was little more than a tin box perched on top of them. His soufflés were never less than successful. ... For three or four years I lived mainly on rather rough but highly flavoured colourful shining vegetable dishes, lentil or fresh tomato soups, delicious spiced pilaffs, lamb kebabs grilled over charcoal, salads with cool mint-flavoured yoghurt dressings,

4796-448: The collapse—as she did not want her reputation as a hard worker to be damaged. She recovered, but her confidence was badly shaken and her sense of taste was temporarily affected; for a period she could not taste salt, or the effect salt had on what she was cooking, but her sense of the smell of frying onions was so enhanced as to be unpleasant for her. In November 1965, together with four business partners, David opened Elizabeth David Ltd,

4905-407: The company. To her annoyance, the shop continued to trade under her name, although she tried periodically to persuade her former colleagues to change it. David's second book on English food was English Bread and Yeast Cookery , which she spent five years researching and writing. The work covered the history of bread-making in England and an examination of each ingredient used. She was angered by

5014-636: The country, watching cooks at home and in restaurants and making extensive notes on the regional differences in the cuisine. While in Rome she met the painter Renato Guttuso ; deeply impressed by his work, particularly his still lifes , she asked if he would illustrate her book. To her surprise he agreed and, while considering the fee of £60 absurdly low, he kept to his word and produced a series of illustrations. Arriving back in London in October 1952, David began

5123-692: The crew members got sick from scurvy and died. With a diminished crew São Rafael became superfluous; the vessel was burned at East Africa after the transfer of its crew and provisions. The remaining two vessels got caught in a storm near the Cape Verde islands and separated. At that time both ships were leaking and in poor shape. Bérrio under Nicolau Coelho's command arrived at Cascais near Lisbon on July 10, 1499, and São Gabriel without Gama and directed by João de Sá came in one month later. Gama had left São Gabriel on its final leg and commissioned another vessel to bring him with his dying brother Paulo to

5232-581: The drawings added to the attractions of the book. Martin Salisbury, the professor of illustration at the Cambridge School of Art , writes that Minton's "brilliant, neo-romantic designs perfectly complement the writing". David placed great importance on the illustration of books, and described Minton's jacket design as "stunning". She was especially taken with "his beautiful Mediterranean bay, his tables spread with white cloths and bright fruit" and

5341-564: The earliest spiced biscuits was gingerbread , in French, pain d'épices , meaning "spice bread", brought to Europe in 992 by the Armenian monk Grégoire de Nicopolis . He left Nicopolis Pompeii, of Lesser Armenia to live in Bondaroy , France, near the town of Pithiviers . He stayed there for seven years and taught French priests and Christians how to cook gingerbread. This was originally

5450-494: The extra time to this book will be well repaid by dishes such as La Bourride de Charles Bérot and Cassoulet Colombié ." The Observer said that it was difficult to think of any home that could do without the book and called David "a very special kind of genius". French Provincial Cooking was dedicated to Peter Higgins, still her lover. David's estranged husband had lived in Spain since 1953 and, to his wife's embarrassment, he

5559-562: The family had fulfilled their task of instilling French culture into at least one of their British charges. Forgotten were the Sorbonne professors. ... What had stuck was the taste for a kind of food quite ideally unlike anything I had known before." Stella Gwynne was not eager for her daughter's early return to England after qualifying for her Sorbonne diploma, and sent her from Paris to Munich in 1931 to study German. After returning to England in 1932 David unenthusiastically went through

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5668-417: The feel of writing with a pen—and in exchange for a low rent, Felicité expertly typed her articles and books, and later acted as her principal researcher. A Book of Mediterranean Food was successful enough for Lehmann to commission David to write a sequel, to show the dishes of rural France . This was French Country Cooking , which David finished writing in October 1950. Minton was employed to illustrate

5777-545: The first half of 1936 and in Egypt later in the same year, but in her 1999 biography Artemis Cooper comments that David's lengthy absence failed to detach her from her involvement with Cowan. During her stay in Malta, David was able to spend time learning from her hostess's cook, Angela, who was happy to pass on her expertise. Although she could produce elaborate grand dinners when required, the most important lesson she taught David

5886-545: The following year. She rented rooms in a large house near the park, spent a generous 21st birthday present on equipping the kitchen, and learned to cook. A gift from her mother of The Gentle Art of Cookery by Hilda Leyel was her first cookery book. She later wrote, "I wonder if I would have ever learned to cook at all if I had been given a routine Mrs Beeton to learn from, instead of the romantic Mrs Leyel with her rather wild, imagination-catching recipes." At Regent's Park David made little professional progress. The company

5995-440: The hardest biscuit possible. Because it is so hard and dry, if properly stored and transported, navies' hardtack will survive rough handling and high temperature. Baked hard, it can be kept without spoiling for years as long as it is kept dry. For long voyages, hardtack was baked four times, rather than the more common two. To soften hardtack for eating, it was often dunked in brine , coffee, or some other liquid or cooked into

6104-517: The hardtack ship's biscuit or the creative art of the baker: Biscuits today can be savoury ( crackers ) or sweet. Most are small, at around 5 cm (2.0 in) in diameter, and flat. Sandwich-style biscuits consist of two biscuits sandwiching a layer of "creme" or icing , such as the custard cream , or a layer of jam (as in the biscuits that are known as " Jammie Dodgers " in the United Kingdom). Sweet biscuits are commonly eaten as

6213-742: The help of the British Consul in Zagreb , they crossed into Greece, and arrived in Athens in July 1940. By this time, David was no longer in love with her partner but remained with him from necessity. Cowan found a job teaching English on the island of Syros , where David learnt to cook with the fresh ingredients available locally. When the Germans invaded Greece in April 1941, the couple managed to leave on

6322-457: The historian Peter Clarke considers that "The seminal influence of Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking (1960), with its enormous sales as a Penguin paperback, deserves historical recognition." Cooper considers that David's "professional career was at its height. She was hailed not only as Britain's foremost writer on food and cookery, but as the woman who had transformed the eating habits of middle-class England." David's private life

6431-555: The intention of sailing it to Greece. They crossed the Channel in July 1939 and navigated the boat through the canal system of France to the Mediterranean coast. The outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939 halted their progress. After stopping briefly at Marseille they sailed on to Antibes , where they remained for more than six months, unable to gain permission to leave. There David met and became greatly influenced by

6540-463: The journal of the Wine and Food Society . In August 1950 David and her husband went on their final holiday together with the money from the new contracts, although they had trouble with the car they were using for touring and the holiday was unsuccessful. On her return she invited Felicité, her youngest sister, to move into the top flat in her house. David was a reluctant and unskilful typist—she preferred

6649-510: The market with new products and eye-catching packaging. The decorative biscuit tin , invented by Huntley & Palmers in 1831, saw British biscuits exported around the world. In 1900 Huntley & Palmers biscuits were sold in 172 countries, and their global reach was reflected in their advertising. Competition and innovation among British firms saw 49 patent applications for biscuit-making equipment, tins, dough-cutting machines and ornamental moulds between 1897 and 1900. In 1891, Cadbury filed

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6758-589: The masses, thanks to the Industrial Revolution and the consumers it created. By the mid-19th century, sweet biscuits were an affordable indulgence and business was booming. Manufacturers such as Huntley & Palmers in Reading, Carr's of Carlisle and McVitie's in Edinburgh transformed from small family-run businesses into state-of-the-art operations. British biscuit companies vied to dominate

6867-503: The post-war period grey and daunting, with food rationing still in force. She encountered terrible food: "There was flour and water soup seasoned solely with pepper; bread and gristle rissoles ; dehydrated onions and carrots; corned beef toad in the hole . I need not go on." In London, she met George Lassalle, a former lover of hers from Cairo days, and their affair was rekindled. The couple went to Ross-on-Wye in November 1946 for

6976-482: The recipes ignored the restrictions of rationing in favour of authenticity, and in several cases the ingredients were not available in British shops. David submitted her manuscript to a series of publishers, all of whom turned it down. One of them explained that a collection of unconnected recipes needed linking text. David took this advice, but conscious of her inexperience as a writer she kept her own prose short and quoted extensively from established authors whose views on

7085-404: The same food all year round". She said that her aim was to put: emphasis on two aspects of cookery which are increasingly disregarded: the suitability of certain foods to certain times of the year, and the pleasures of eating the vegetables, fruits, poultry, meat or fish which is in season, therefore at its best, most plentiful, and cheapest. Soon after the publication of Summer Cooking , David

7194-414: The same group. She intensely disliked the company and wrote a most unflattering portrait of it in a 1985 article. Disapproving of the approach to her books that the company took, her agent, Paul Scott , persuaded Macdonald to relinquish their option on the next book. David signed instead with the publisher Museum Press for her next book, Summer Cooking , which was published in 1955. Summer Cooking

7303-459: The sheets sufficiently coherent to be placed in the oven in one piece and when baked they were easy to separate. The hexagonal shape rather than traditional circular biscuits meant a saving in material and was easier to pack. Biscuits remained an important part of the Royal Navy sailor's diet until the introduction of canned foods . Canned meat was first marketed in 1814; preserved beef in tins

7412-409: The shop, but contributed some articles to magazines, and began to focus more on English cuisine. She still included many recipes but increasingly wrote about places—markets, auberges , farms—and people, including profiles of famous chefs and gourmets such as Marcel Boulestin and Édouard de Pomiane . In her later articles, she expressed strongly held views on a wide range of subjects; she abominated

7521-783: The shop. Some of them were later incorporated into the collections of her essays and articles, An Omelette and a Glass of Wine and Is There a Nutmeg in the House? The shop was described in The Observer as: ... starkly simple. Pyramids of French coffee cups and English pot-bellied iron pans stand in the window. ... Iron shelves hold tin moulds and cutters of every description, glazed and unglazed earthenware pots, bowls and dishes in traditional colours, plain pots and pans in thick aluminium, cast-iron, vitreous enamel and fireproof porcelain, unadorned crockery in classic shapes and neat rows of cooks' knives, spoons and forks. David reduced her writing commitments to concentrate on running

7630-516: The skills of biscuit-making through the craft guilds . As the supply of sugar began, and the refinement and supply of flour increased, so did the ability to sample more leisurely foodstuffs, including sweet biscuits. Early references from the Vadstena monastery show how the Swedish nuns were baking gingerbread to ease digestion in 1444. The first documented trade of gingerbread biscuits dates to

7739-456: The social rituals for upper-class young women of presentation at court as a débutante and the associated balls . The respectable young Englishmen she met at the latter did not appeal to her. David's biographer Lisa Chaney comments that with her "delicately smouldering looks and her shyness shielded by a steely coolness and barbed tongue" she would have been a daunting prospect for the young upper-class men she encountered. David decided that she

7848-427: The standard of bread in Britain and wrote: What is utterly dismaying is the mess our milling and baking concerns succeed in making with the dearly bought grain that goes into their grist. Quite simply it is wasted on a nation that cares so little about the quality of its bread that it has allowed itself to be mesmerized into buying the equivalent of eight and a quarter million large white factory-made loaves every day of

7957-422: The stock, was uncompromising in her choice of merchandise; despite its large range of kitchen implements, the shop did not stock either wall-mounted knife sharpeners or garlic presses . David wrote an article called "Garlic Presses are Utterly Useless", refused to sell them, and advised customers who demanded them to go elsewhere. Not available elsewhere, by contrast, were booklets by David printed specially for

8066-444: The subject while recuperating from her cerebral haemorrhage in 1963. The book was a departure from her earlier works and contained more food history about what she called "the English preoccupation with the spices and the scents, the fruit, the flavourings, the sources and the condiments of the orient , near and far ". Elizabeth David Ltd was never more than modestly profitable, but David would not lower her standards in search of

8175-416: The subservience of retail work irksome, and resigned in early 1938. Over the next few months she spent time holidaying in the south of France and on Corsica , where she was greatly taken with the outgoing nature of the people she stayed with and the simple excellence of their food. After returning to London, and disenchanted with life there, she joined Cowan in buying a small boat—a yawl with an engine—with

8284-567: The term biscotto is used to refer to any type of hard twice-baked biscuit, and not only to the cantucci as in English-speaking countries; it is the same for the modern French term biscuit . The need for nutritious, easy-to-store, easy-to-carry, and long-lasting foods on long journeys, in particular at sea, was initially solved by taking livestock along with a butcher/ cook . However, this took up additional space on what were either horse-powered treks or small ships, reducing

8393-551: The term biscuit is used for a soft, leavened quick bread similar to a savoury version of a scone . The modern-day difference in the English language regarding the word biscuit is remarked on by British cookery writer Elizabeth David in English Bread and Yeast Cookery , in the chapter "Yeast Buns and Small Tea Cakes" and section "Soft Biscuits". She writes: It is interesting that these soft biscuits (such as scones) are common to Scotland and Guernsey , and that

8502-525: The term biscuit as applied to a soft product was retained in these places, and in America, whereas in England it has completely died out. The Old French word bescuit is derived from the Latin words bis ('twice') and coquere, coctus ('to cook', 'cooked'), and, hence, means 'twice-cooked'. This is because biscuits were originally cooked in a twofold process: first baked, and then dried out in

8611-525: The time of travel before additional food was required. This resulted in early armies' adopting the style of hunter- foraging . The introduction of the baking of processed cereals, including the creation of flour, provided a more reliable source of food. Egyptian sailors carried a flat, brittle loaf of millet bread called dhourra cake while the Romans had a biscuit called buccellum . Roman cookbook Apicius describes: "a thick paste of fine wheat flour

8720-510: The time was the exclusive province of the family's cook and her kitchen staff. As a teenager David enjoyed painting, and her mother thought her talent worth developing. In 1930 she was sent to Paris, where she studied painting privately and enrolled at the Sorbonne for a course in French civilisation which covered history, literature and architecture. She found her Sorbonne studies arduous and in many ways uninspiring, but they left her with

8829-615: The time were scarcely available in Britain. Books on French, Italian and, later, English cuisine followed. By the 1960s David was a major influence on British cooking. She was deeply hostile to anything second-rate, to over-elaborate cooking, and bogus substitutes for classic dishes and ingredients. In 1965 she opened a shop selling kitchen equipment, which continued to trade under her name after she left it in 1973. David's reputation rests on her articles and her books, which have been continually reprinted. Between 1950 and 1984 she published eight books; after her death her literary executor completed

8938-573: The time, little was known in Britain about Italian cuisine and interest in the country was on the rise. She received an advance of £300 for the book. She planned to visit Italy for research, and wanted to see Douglas in Capri again, but received news of his death in February 1952, which left her deeply saddened. David left London in March, arriving in Rome just before the Easter celebrations. She toured

9047-494: The tiny marrows called by the French courgettes and in Italy zucchini , much the same situation prevailed. Italian Food was warmly received by reviewers and the public, and the first print run sold out within three weeks. The Times Literary Supplement ' s reviewer wrote, "More than a collection of recipes, this book is in effect a readable and discerning dissertation on Italian food and regional dishes, and their preparation in

9156-412: The two words and their "same but different" meanings began to clash. The words cookie or cracker became the words of choice to mean a hard, baked product. Further confusion has been added by the adoption of the word biscuit for a small leavened bread popular in the United States. According to the American English dictionary Merriam-Webster , a cookie is a "small flat or slightly raised cake". A biscuit

9265-674: The way that "pitchers and jugs and bottles of wine could be seen far down the street"; she considered the cover design aided the success of the book, but was less convinced by his black and white drawings. The book was well received by reviewers. Elizabeth Nicholas, writing for The Sunday Times , thought David a "gastronome of rare integrity" who "refuses ... to make any ignoble compromises with expediency". Although John Chandos, writing in The Observer , pointed out that "Let no one eating in London—with whatever abandon—imagine that he

9374-504: The weather was initially cold and wet, it soon turned warmer and she enjoyed herself so much that she considered buying a house there. In June 1951 she left Ménerbes and travelled to the island of Capri to visit Norman Douglas. When she left in late August, she toured briefly around the Italian Riviera researching for an article for Go , before returning to London. In September, shortly after her return, French Country Cooking

9483-477: The word "crispy", demanding to know what it conveyed that "crisp" did not; she confessed to an inability to refill anybody's wineglass until it was empty; she insisted on the traditional form " Welsh rabbit " rather than the modern invention "Welsh rarebit"; she poured scorn on the Guide Michelin's standards; she deplored "fussy garnish ... distract[ing] from the main flavours"; she inveighed against

9592-606: The work, and David gave him detailed instructions about the type of drawings; she was more pleased with them than those for her first work. Despite their difficult relationship, David dedicated the book to her mother. Before the book was published, David left England to live for a short time in France. She was motivated by a desire to gain a wider knowledge of life in the French countryside, and to put distance between her and her husband. She left London in March 1951 for Ménerbes , Provence . She spent three months in Provence; although

9701-451: The writing showed a widely travelled person with an independent mind. She offered David a contract, and David's work began appearing in the publication from March 1949. David told Scott-James that she planned to publish the articles as a book, and was allowed to retain the copyright by the magazine. Even before all the articles had been published, she had assembled them into a typescript volume called A Book of Mediterranean Food ; many of

9810-475: Was a British cookery writer. In the mid-20th century she strongly influenced the revitalisation of home cookery in her native country and beyond with articles and books about European cuisines and traditional British dishes . Born to an upper-class family, David rebelled against social norms of the day. In the 1930s she studied art in Paris, became an actress, and ran off with a married man with whom she sailed in

9919-482: Was a different creature: drinking at Hedjaki's bar, eating at the P'tit Coin de France, dancing on the roof of the Continental and then going on to Madame Badia's nightclub or the glamorous Auberge des Pyramides." In her years in Cairo, David had a number of affairs. She enjoyed them for what they were, but only once fell in love. That was with a young officer, Peter Laing, but the relationship came to an end when he

10028-523: Was a dutiful mother, but her relations with her daughters were distant rather than affectionate. Elizabeth and her sisters, Priscilla, Diana and Felicité were sent away to boarding schools. Having been a pupil at Godstowe preparatory school in High Wycombe , Elizabeth was sent to St Clare's Private School for Ladies, Tunbridge Wells , which she left at the age of sixteen. The girls grew up knowing nothing of cooking, which in upper-class households of

10137-453: Was boiled and spread out on a plate. When it had dried and hardened, it was cut up and then fried until crisp, then served with honey and pepper." Many early physicians believed that most medicinal problems were associated with digestion . Hence, for both sustenance and avoidance of illness, a daily consumption of a biscuit was considered good for health. Hard biscuits soften as they age. To solve this problem, early bakers attempted to create

10246-760: Was born Elizabeth Gwynne, the second of four children, all daughters, of Rupert Sackville Gwynne and his wife, the Hon Stella Gwynne, daughter of the 1st Viscount Ridley . Both parents' families had considerable fortunes, the Gwynnes from engineering and land speculation and the Ridleys from coal mining. Through the two families, David was of English, Scottish and Welsh or Irish descent and, through an ancestor on her father's side, also Dutch and Sumatran . She and her sisters grew up at Wootton Manor in Sussex ,

10355-511: Was distinguished, headed by Nigel Playfair and Jack Hawkins , and, in the leading female roles, Anna Neagle and Margaretta Scott . David was restricted to bit parts . Among her colleagues in the company was an actor nine years her senior, Charles Gibson Cowan. His disregard for social conventions appealed strongly to her, and she also found him sexually irresistible. His being married did not daunt either of them, and they began an affair that outlasted her stage career. Chaney comments, "Cowan

10464-519: Was illustrated by David's friend, the artist Adrian Daintrey . He would visit her at home and sketch her in the kitchen while she cooked a lunch for them both. Unconstrained by the geographical agendas of her first three books, David wrote about dishes from Britain, India, Mauritius , Russia, Spain and Turkey, as well as France, Italy and Greece. The book reflected her strong belief in eating food in season; she loved "the pleasure of rediscovering each season's vegetables" and thought it "rather dull to eat

10573-514: Was learning, and how enormously these dishes were enlarging my own scope and enjoyment". Italian Food was published in November 1954. At the time, many of the ingredients used in the recipes were still difficult to obtain in Britain. Looking back in 1963, David wrote: In Soho but almost nowhere else, such things as Italian pasta , and Parmesan cheese, olive oil, salame , and occasionally Parma ham were to be had. ... With southern vegetables such as aubergines, red and green peppers, fennel,

10682-429: Was less felicitous. In April 1963 her affair with Higgins came to an end when he remarried. For a period she drank too much brandy and resorted too often to sleeping pills. Probably as a result of these factors and overwork, in 1963, when she was 49, David suffered a cerebral haemorrhage . She kept the news of the event within her close circle of friends—none of the editors of the publications she worked for were aware of

10791-554: Was made by machine at the Royal Clarence Victualling Yard at Gosport , Hampshire, stamped with the Queen's mark and the number of the oven in which they were baked. When machinery was introduced into the process the dough was thoroughly mixed and rolled into sheets about 2 yards (1.8 m) long and 1 yard (0.9 m) wide which were stamped in one stroke into about sixty hexagonal-shaped biscuits. This left

10900-403: Was named in a divorce case which was reported in the gossip column of The Daily Express . In an interview published in the newspaper, Tony had referred to David as "my ex-wife"; she filed for divorce, and the process was finalised in 1960. In 1960 David stopped writing for The Sunday Times , as she was unhappy about editorial interference with her copy; soon afterwards she also left Vogue as

11009-606: Was not good enough as a painter and, to her mother's displeasure, became an actress. She joined J. B. Fagan 's company at the Oxford Playhouse in 1933. Her fellow performers included Joan Hickson , who decades later recalled having to show her new colleague how to make a cup of tea, so unaware of the kitchen was David in those days. From Oxford, David moved to the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park , London,

11118-506: Was officially added to Royal Navy rations in 1847. Early biscuits were hard, dry, and unsweetened. They were most often cooked after bread, in a cooling bakers' oven; they were a cheap form of sustenance for the poor. By the 7th century AD, cooks of the Persian empire had learnt from their forebears the techniques of lightening and enriching bread-based mixtures with eggs, butter, and cream, and sweetening them with fruit and honey. One of

11227-541: Was published. It was warmly reviewed by critics, although Lucie Marion, writing in The Manchester Guardian , considered that "I cannot think that Mrs David has tried actually to make many of the dishes for which she gives recipes". David wrote to the paper to set the record straight, saying that it would have been "irresponsible and mischievous" if she had not tested them all. Lehmann and David agreed that her next book should be about Italian food ; at

11336-467: Was seriously wounded and returned to his native Canada. Several other of her young men fell in love with her; one of them was Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony David (1911–1967). By now aged thirty, she weighed the advantages and disadvantages of remaining unmarried until such time as the ideal husband might appear, and with considerable misgivings she finally accepted Tony David's proposal of marriage. The couple were married in Cairo on 30 August 1944. Within

11445-491: Was substituted by rice, fish, or cheese. Other provisions included flour, lentils, sardines, plums, almonds, garlic, mustard, salt, honey, sugar. Fresh fish was caught en route, and supplies were replenished in harbors including oranges (to prevent scurvy ). The ships also carried a number of padrões , pillars of stone headed by the cross and bearing the seal of Portugal and used as markers to claim land. The armada left Restelo near Lisbon on July 8, 1497. After rounding

11554-484: Was the ultimate outsider. He was working class, left wing, Jewish, an actor, a pickpocket, a vagabond, who lived in caves in Hastings for a time. Her mother called him a 'pacifist worm'. He was a sexual presence, and slept with anything that moved." David's mother strongly disapproved, and tried to put a stop to the affair. She arranged for her daughter to spend several weeks holidaying with family and friends in Malta in

11663-490: Was to work day in, day out, with all available ingredients, showing her how to make an old bird or a stringy piece of meat into a good dish. After her return to London in early 1937, David recognised that she was not going to be a success on the stage, and abandoned thoughts of a theatrical career. Later in the year she took a post as a junior assistant at the fashion house of Worth , where elegant young women from upper-class backgrounds were sought after as recruits. She found

11772-430: Was told by her doctors that the condition would persist if she remained in the summer heat of Delhi . Instead, she was advised to go back to England. She did so; Cooper observes, "She had been away from England for six years, and in that time she, and England, had changed beyond recognition." Returning after her years of Mediterranean warmth and access to a profusion of fresh ingredients, David found her native country in

11881-501: Was wooed away from her regular column in Harper ' s by Vogue magazine, which offered her more money and more prominence—a full central page with a continuing column following, and a full page photograph. The new contract meant she also wrote for Vogue ' s sister magazine House & Garden . Audrey Withers , the editor of Vogue , wanted David to write more personal columns than she had done for Harper's , and paid her £20

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