This book was privately published in 1969 after the author’s death. It was edited and introduced by Patience Gray, who herself needs no introduction to Prospect readers. Echoes of Irving Davis, antiquarian bookseller, publisher and man of letters, abound in her own masterpiece Honey from a Weed.
This book is a fragment – he was a man who sought perfection – and yet is complete enough for us to enjoy, and to cook from. He called his recipes ‘impossible’ because he despaired at substitution, or derogation from the original. ‘Macaroni in the oven’ calls for the blood of a chicken, other dishes are equally demanding. In the time since it was first written, authentic provisions and materials have become more available in Britain, the book less impossible. The welcome afforded the recent reissue in Britain of Colman Andrews’ Catalan Cuisine is a mark of the esteem attached to this style of cookery. Irving Davis’ book is a perfect introduction; its limpid prose is a reminder of past habits of mind. There are sixty recipes, from soups to sweets, taking in a summer and a winter drink along the way. There are also eleven fine engravings by the artist Nicole Fenosa, at whose home in Vendrell Irving Davis spent many summers. There are under a hundred recipes which are disarmingly simple yet make few concessions to the novice cook: this is not Delia Smith for the Mediterranean masses. There are eight main chapters covering soups; omelettes; pasta; snails; sea food; meat; salads and vegetables; and sweets. There is an appendix with some further documents about Irving Davis, including a few lines of his own on his life.
The love affair of the English (and all northern Europeans) with the Mediterranean had especial piquancy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – before easy travel opened to us other regions of the sun. Irving Davis’ book strikes the same chords of memory and fascination as do the works of Goethe, Winckelmann, Norman Douglas, Gracie Fields, Somerset Maugham, Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, and Elizabeth David. Its publication might be seen as the last gasp of an era. The book has had a pleasing reception in the British and the American press. Although it is the opposite of the current idea of a cookery book (no colour pics, not many recipes, no personality chef), it appeals to the reader as being good to handle, easy to read and attractively decked out. Rowley Leigh in the Sunday Telegraph chose it as one of his Christmas books, and recently wrote about it in the Financial Times (2020).
