Homage to a Classic Cook

Appears in

#25Honey from a Weed
Honey from a Weed

By Patience Gray

Published 1986

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IT is more illuminating to have as friend a gourmet who is a classic cook than to study innumerable books.
Irving Davis, when I first met him, was shocked that I had had the temerity to write on cooking before I knew him. On that occasion he engaged me in a searching discussion about fungi and finding that I had studied the subject at first hand, thereby passing a ‘test’, he invited me to dinner in Brunswick Square.

He had cooked a canard à l’orange. ‘My cooking days are over,’ he remarked in the face of this tangible testimony to the contrary. The aroma alone of this golden creature before it had been lifted out of the cast-iron enamelled casserole belied this statement.