Tasting Language

Abstract

While chefs and home cooks have lauded Elizabeth David's culinary expertise since the publication of Mediterranean Food in 1950, scant attention has been paid to the subversive nature of her prose. This paper explores the trangressiveness of David's writing, which arises from its articulation of female pleasure and its celebration of an aesthetic firmly grounded in the senses. While David developed this aesthetic during six years living in the Mediterranean, she learned to fashion it into language upon her return to a war-rationed England in 1946. Driven by the desire to relive the pleasures of her travels, David began to translate her sensory engagement with Mediterranean food into prose. In so doing, she nourished her hunger for another time and place with language. She also fed the imagination of the British public, who once again began to dream about the flavor of fresh ingredients long lost in England's war effort.