‘It is not really an exaggeration’, wrote Marcel Boulestin, ‘to say that peace and happiness begin, geographically, where garlic is used in cooking.’

THIS book first appeared in 1950, when almost every essential ingredient of good cooking was either rationed or unobtainable.

Those who make an occasional marketing expedition to Soho or to the region of Tottenham Court Road can buy Greek cheese and Calamata olives, Tahina paste from the Middle East, little birds preserved in oil from Cyprus, stuffed vine leaves from Turkey, Spanish sausages, Egyptian brown beans, chick peas, Armenian ham, Spanish, Italian, and Cypriot olive oil, Italian salame and rice, even occasionally Neapolitan Mozzarella cheese, and honey from Mount Hymettus.

when meat, butter, cheese, sugar, eggs, bacon, milk, and even biscuits, sweets and chocolate were rationed, when fresh vegetables and fruit were scarce, lemons, oranges and tomatoes as rare as diamonds, commodities such as olive oil, rice, and imported pasta no more than exotic memories, and fresh fish something you stood in a queue for

to a generation which had suffered from five years of wartime food and rationing and could barely remember what it had been like to have unlimited butter, cream, oranges, lemons, sugar, jam, meat, not to mention wine and olive oil, the cheese at the end of a meal was an irrelevance. The point was first to make sure you had the wherewithal to prepare a meal, then you could start worrying about whether or not it would be complete without three or four ounces of cheese.

her final accolade was, ‘as further testimony to the unusual quality of this book, it should be added that it contains not one reference to Brillat-Savarin’. It was gratifying that a critic had noticed what had indeed been a very deliberate omission.

They would get 50% of the royalties, I was to be content with the remaining 50%. So matters remain to this day. That company, which had not had the slightest part in the initial publication of the book – and has never raised a finger to promote it, or either of the subsequent ones which fell into their hands – is still reaping, via the paperback editions, the benefit of John Lehmann’s flair and foresight.

Melokhia is a glutinous soup much beloved by the Arabs, particularly in Egypt. Melokhia is a kind of mallow (Greek malakhe, Latin malva).

‘Our supper was of the simplest kind; all the serving men and maids of the hostelry had gone to the dance, and we had to be content with a mere gaspacho. This gaspacho is worthy of a special description, and we shall here give the recipe, which would have made the hair of the late Brillat-Savarin stand on end. You pour some water into a soup tureen, and to this water you add a dash of vinegar, some cloves of garlic, some onions cut into quarters, some slices of cucumber, a few pieces of pimento, a pinch of salt; then one cuts some bread and sets it to soak in this pleasing mixture, serving it cold. At home, a dog of any breeding would refuse to sully its nose with such a compromising mixture. It is the favourite dish of the Andalusians, and the prettiest women do not shrink from swallowing bowlfuls of this hell-broth of an evening.

An omelette ought never to be stiff enough to retain a very neatly rolled-up appearance. If cooked with proper rapidity it should be too light to present a fixed form, and on reaching the hot dish should spread itself, rather, on account of the delicacy of its substance. Books that counsel you to turn an omelette, to fold it, to let it brown on one side, to let it fry for about five minutes, etc., are not to be trusted.

Timed by the seconds hand of a watch, an omelette of six eggs, cooked according to my method “by the first intention”, takes forty-five seconds from the moment of being poured into the pan to that of being turned into the dish.

Whatever the snail’s food may be, it is improbable, to say the least of it, that any flavour is left after the animal has been starved for thirty or forty days, cleaned in vinegar and salt, rinsed in ten lots of water, and then boiled for several hours.

They forget that the Bourguignon snails have been cooked for an hour in a litre of Chablis, while the Provençals have undergone the same process in salt water, together with a large bunch of thyme and a still larger quantity of fennel. At that rate one might impart the taste of wine or fennel to chewing-gum.

The reason is this: as the preparation requires a large variety of so-called rock fish, it is as well to make it as lavishly as possible in order to use as many different kinds as are available. Several of these fish have a characteristic taste, a unique perfume. It is upon the combination of all these different tastes that the success of the operation depends.

Take some good salt cod, about 2 lb for 6 people, which has been soaked in cold water for 12 hours. Clean it well and put it into a pan of cold water; cover, and as soon as it comes to the boil remove from the fire. Carefully remove all the bones and put the pieces into a pan in which you have already crushed up a clove of garlic and placed over a very low flame. In two other small saucepans have some milk and some olive oil, both keeping warm, but not hot. You now add the oil and the milk alternately to the fish, spoon by spoon, stirring hard the whole time, with a wooden spoon, and crushing the cod against the sides of the pan. (Hence the name brandade – branler: to crush or break.) When the whole mixture has attained the appearance of a thick cream the operation is finished; it should be observed however that all three ingredients must be kept merely tepid, or the oil will disintegrate and ruin the whole preparation.

The octopus sounds alarming to those who have not travelled in the Mediterranean; it is in fact an excellent dish when properly prepared, rich and with a reminiscence of lobster.

The Greeks in fact prefer their food tepid, and it is useless to argue with them.

It is hard to say why there is such a prejudice against this animal in England, and it is only the gastronomically ignorant who, the moment they go abroad, suppose that whatever meat they are eating is disguised horse or goat.

no other will serve the purpose so well, the long Patna type of rice being wasted on this dish, for it is not sufficiently absorbent and makes your risotto tough and brittle, whereas a poor quality or small-grained rice will turn into a pudding.

you understand how the cassoulet came into being; it was evolved to make the best use of the local materials; when you have to go out and buy these things the cost is high (this is just as much the case in France as in England) and although quite a good dish can be made at moderate cost it should be remembered that tinned beans and sausages served in an earthenware casserole do not, alas, constitute a cassoulet.

This pot is then laid on its side in a hollow dug at the edge of a bank of earth, and buried. Underneath the pot the earth is scooped out to make room for a fire of resinous pinewood or charcoal, and this is left slowly burning for 2 or 3 hours.

M. Couteaux related at length how he had spent a week in Poitou hunting the right kind of hare; how, the exactly suitable animal at last in his hands, he instantly took the train to Paris, sent out his invitations, and hurried off to consult his friend Spüller, who ran a well-known restaurant in the Rue Favart, to arrange the preparation and cooking of his hare for the following day. The dish takes from noon until 7 o’clock to prepare and cook, and Senator Couteaux tells how by 6 o’clock the exquisite aroma had penetrated the doors of Spüller’s restaurant, floated down the street and out into the boulevard, where the passers-by sniffed the scented air; an excitable crowd gathered, and the whole quartier was ‘mis en émoi’.

‘The chopping of the garlic and the shallots must be so fine that each of them attain as nearly as possible a molecular state.

‘The near end of the street was rather dark and had mostly vegetable shops. Abundance of vegetables – piles of white and green fennel, like celery, and great sheaves of young, purplish, sea-dust-coloured artichokes, nodding their buds, piles of big radishes, scarlet and bluey purple, carrots, long strings of dried figs, mountains of big oranges, scarlet large peppers, a last slice of pumpkin, a great mass of colours and vegetable freshnesses. A mountain of black-purple cauliflowers, like niggers’ heads, and a mountain of snow-white ones next to them. How the dark, greasy, night-stricken street seems to beam with these vegetables, all this fresh delicate flesh of luminous vegetables piled there in the air, and in the recesses of the windowless little caverns of the shops, and gleaming forth on the dark air, under the lamps.’

When there was a shortage of potatoes in the Middle East during the war, the Army cooks made the fatal mistake of cooking sweet potatoes like chips, with the result that the whole of the Eighth Army grew to detest these vegetables, and it is true that they are not good when treated as an ordinary potato and served as an adjunct to meat.

You need a fine fillet of pork, cut from a young animal; cut some uncooked truffes in pieces about the size of a pigeon’s egg. With the point of a knife make a number of deep incisions, a few centimetres apart, in the inside of the filet. Into each incision introduce a piece of truffe, pushing it well in towards the centre of the fillet, to produce a marbled effect.

In Greece your mézé (the equivalent of our hors d’œuvre) is eaten while you drink your apéritif and not as part of the main meal.

‘The whole Mediterranean, the sculpture, the palms, the gold beads, the bearded heroes, the wine, the ideas, the ships, the moonlight, the winged gorgons, the bronze men, the philosophers – all of it seems to rise in the sour, pungent taste of these black olives between the teeth. A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water.’*