Is There a Nutmeg in the House?: Essays on Practical Cooking with More Than 150 Recipes [Paperback]

Elizabeth David (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 29, 2002

The sequel to her much-acclaimed An Omelette and a Glass of Wine, Is There a Nutmeg in the House? gathers a selection of Elizabeth David's writings, spanning four decades. Insisting that food need not be complicated to be delicious, she emphasizes the practical aspects of cooking and eating. More than 150 recipes from many countries are included, all bearing David's unmistakable personal touch. Always elegant and witty, her writing conveys her sense of season and place, as well as her passionate interest in food, its history, its myriad personalities, and its role in civilized society.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you care about food, you must read Elizabeth David. Author of nine definitive books, including Italian Food and French Provincial Cooking, her writings famously helped reawaken the postwar British palate while educating, through authentic recipes and compelling investigation, a generation of cooks about food and its joys. Is There a Nutmeg in the House?--a second posthumous anthology (David died in 1992)--contains previously uncollected essays, journalism, and correspondence, plus 150 recipes, all of which reveal the author at her wonderfully informative best. Readers will delight in her opinionated yet embracing sensibility, her unerring sense of what makes food not only good but genuine--true to itself and the people who make it.

The book is divided into course-based chapters that net David's wide-ranging essays and recipes. The essays explore, among other topics, the story of bouillon cubes; the virtues of nutmeg; the uselessness of garlic presses; the nature of the ideal kitchen (keep refrigerators far away from stoves, she advises); and the best way to poach an egg (David quotes an historical source on the subject, with whom she agrees that if the eggs aren't fresh, "it is not in the power of the best cook in the Kingdom to poach [them] handsome"). The recipes run the gamut from a brilliant pizza quartet (Roman, Provençal, Armenian, and Genovese variations) to Beans in the Tuscan Bean Jar (a flasklike container that ensures even cooking) to ice creams and other tempting desserts like the Victorian Lemon and Brown Sugar Cake. With woodcuts and other illustration, the book is a treasure. --Arthur Boehm --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

An Englishwoman who traipsed through Africa and the Mediterranean countries in the early 1940s, David (1913-1992) opened up a world of flavors and techniques that must have seemed seductively exotic to a postwar Great Britain still struggling with food rationing. She was perhaps best known for French Provincial Cooking, but was also the author of food essays in such publications as Vogue, the London Sunday Times and Gourmet, some of which were eventually published in the highly regarded collection An Omelette and a Glass of Wine. This volume is a compilation of essays and recipes that didn't make it into the first, chosen by editor and longtime associate Jill Norman. The title essay succinctly sums up David's demand for cultural and gastronomic accuracy in cooking, as well as shows off her exacting writing. In it she bemoans the passing of the 18th-century tradition of carrying one's own nutmeg box and grater. She asserts that in fine London restaurants, she must ask for nutmeg to grate on her pasta and spinach dishes, a spice she considers as integral to Italian cooking as "Parmesan cheese and oregano and for that matter salt." A labor of love, the result is yet another evocative and entertaining exploration of cooking and the time, place and personalities that shaped it.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (October 29, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 014200166X
• ISBN-13: 978-0142001660
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,468,094 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Anglocentric? Not hardly, February 9, 2002

By 

A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Is There a Nutmeg in the House? (Hardcover)

I find it odd that the previous reviewer considered Elizabeth David "Anglocentric," as she spent most of her life irritating her fellow Englishmen and -women by attempting to awaken them to cuisines other than their own. In my opinion, David is possibly the finest food writer ever. Though not quite as good as AN OMELETTE AND A GLASS OF WINE, this book hardly constitutes her "dregs."

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a must-read for all food lovers, January 10, 2003

By 

Karen Sampson Hudson "Karen Sampson Hudson" (Reno, NV United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Is There a Nutmeg in the House?: Essays on Practical Cooking with More Than 150 Recipes (Paperback)

Elizabeth David is the woman who has restored good eating to England. For many decades the British were known for what might tactfully be called "plain cooking"---overdone roasts, vegetables boiled beyond recognition, oversweet, gooey desserts. In her eight books and in her columns, David enthusiastically re-introduced the British to fresh vegetables, delicate sauces, simple desserts, and flavorful, whole-grain bread.

At the age of 16, this daughter of the landed gentry was sent to France for a cultural education and came home with a lifelong passion for good cooking. "Is There a Nutmeg in the House" is a complilation of her writings from forty years, some of which has not been published before.

David's writing style is recognizably British, opinionated, chatty, not excessively organized, and a bit "fussy", for want of a better term. This only added to the pleasure of reading her, for this reviewer; although a person used to the standard American format for providing recipes, with the ingredients listed in the order of combination, and step by step instruction, will not find that in David.

Elizabeth David was a national treasure for England, and her lifelong passion for "cookery" earns her a place on the bookshelf of many American kitchens as well.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fine and quirky food mind on show, February 14, 2002

By 

Jessica Weissman "poet and computer programmer" (Silver Spring, MD USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Is There a Nutmeg in the House? (Hardcover)

Elizabeth David wrote cookbooks and food essays; many of the more personal ones were already collected in the amazing and wonderous An Omelette and a Glass of Wine. But this book has plenty of gems, too. I don't agree with everything she says, but I certainly want to listen to her saying it.

Get An Omelette and a Glass of Wine first, then this one if you want more.