Breathless awe

For me Elizabeth David remains one of the most compelling food writers ever (despite the fact that I think her influence might have been detrimental to postwar beer). I read her books constantly and this morning while flicking through An Omelette and a Glass of Wine I started reading this essay about Edouard de Pomaine, a French food writer and scientist. According to David he was not a fan of fancy French cooking and described Homard à l’amércaine as ‘a cacophony…it offends a basic principle of taste.’ However, what really interested me was the rest of the paragraph from David: I rather wish he had gone to work on some of the astonishing things Escoffier and his contemporaries did to fruit. Choice pears masked with chocolate sauce and cream, beautiful fresh peaches smothered in raspberry purée and set around with vanilla ice seem to me offences to nature, let alone art or basic principles. How very rum that people still write of these inventions with breathless awe. My point? If you substitute the word fruit with beer then you might get what I’m driving at. There’s a fine line between innovation and novelty and sometimes I don’t think some brewers get it. 

Do I blame Elizabeth David for postwar beer decline?

I’ve had a theory for some time that the decline in beer consumption in the UK was partially due to the influence of Elizabeth David on British middle class cooking habits. Back in the 1950s, olive oil was something you got from the chemist, while aubergines were probably thought to be the vegetal props of red-nosed, low comedians and garlic a salve against those teddy boys who fancied themselves as Christopher Lee. Then comes Elizabeth David with her cook books full of Mediterranean sun — and voila garlic, aubergines and courgettes all feature in the British middle class kitchen. Coq au vin, Greek salad, Navarin lamb — what is the drink that is served alongside dishes like these? Wine of course. This was obviously not the only reason (and actually David is by far my favourite cookery writer with French Provincial Cooking being my desert island cook book), but maybe it added to all those other things that eventually stripped British beer of its dominant status (foreign holidays didn’t just mean lager but also Mateus Rose and Liebfraumilch, both of which could be boozed while sitting in front of the telly). 

This thought occurred to me as I remembered about how one British cookery writer (possibly Arabella Boxer) believed that David’s prediliction for the south stunted the growth of British cooking, which was just showing signs of emerging from its tunnel of Brown Windsor and steamed cabbage. Bit unfair to blame one writer of this decline (and by association the decline of beer), but at roughly the same time (mid 1950s) just as David was weaving her magic on the middle classes, another food writer Elizabeth Craig released Beer and Vittles, totally dedicated to recipes cooked or served with beer (I love the idea of the Weissbeer Zuppe, which suggests one and half pints of ale). The opening line of the introduction has Craig write: ‘if there is one form of cookery that has been neglected more than another in Britain it is beer cookery.’ Back in 1955, did anyone think that this observation was right I wonder?