Without Resorting to Hyperbole

Elizabeth David wrote clear, limpid prose. Without resorting to hyperbole, she was able to evoke food – its appearance, scent and flavour – in a context that might range from a table at a seaside taverna in Greece, an oleander-drenched terrace in Provence or a damp evening at a commercial hotel in the Midlands. I tried to explain her genius (I think that is a fair appraisal) to a seminar of budding food writers a few weeks ago. I failed. They ‘sort of’ got the point when I read out a page of French Provincial Cooking, but thought she used words that ‘you couldn’t use nowadays’ and thought her intense discrimination merely snobbery.