How food writers have been enriched by Alan Davidson
There are many food books in my library that I don’t remember buying. But one of them, “A Kipper with My Tea” (Northpoint Press, San Francisco, 1990), my husband bought for me, to excuse himself for buying a lot of books himself, I suppose. It introduced me to Alan Davidson, whom I consider a premier food writer.
Davidson, when choosing between continuing his life as a diplomat having been flattered by a colleague as a “great Whitehall warrior” and going into what he loved to do—researching and writing about food—chose the latter. And we, food writers, have been enriched by his many books, his editorship of “The Oxford Companion to Food” (Oxford University Press, 1909), his organizing the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, as well as his publishing efforts.
Aquatic avocation
Davidson served as ambassador to Tunisia and then later in Laos. His interest in fish began when his wife made a simple request to make her a list of the fish in the market, identifying the species of the local fish which will give her the name of a similar fish in other places.
Later on, identifying fish became an avocation resulting in several books: “Mediterranean Seafood,” “North Atlantic Seafood,” “Seafood of Southeast Asia,” “Seafood: A Connoisseur’s Guide and Cookbook” and “Fish and Fish Dishes of Laos.”
My library has three of those and I know I bought them during one of my travels. What is beautiful about the books are the illustrations. They give a clear picture of the fish and seafood and makes for delightful viewing, like looking at paintings in a museum. Of course, the information gathered from the writing is what recommends them.
But there is one book I didn’t even know Davidson published with other authors. “The Wilder Shores of Gastronomy” (Ten Speed Press, 2002) is a compilation of food writing from a little pamphlet called “Petits Propos Culinaires.” The authors were not paid, and it survived on subscribers alone. What an adventure in publishing!
But how the project came about makes for an interesting read. In his new life as food writer, Davidson was asked to edit “Good Cook,” a Time/Life book series on food. The editor was Richard Olney, who was warned by the publishers that no recipe could appear in the series that wasn’t published before. Olney asked Davidson’s help with the problem, and Davidson, with writer friends like Elizabeth David, started that little pamphlet which published the recipes as well that Olney needed.
“The Wilder Shores of Gastronomy” is a compilation of 20 years of that pamphlet. And I want to confess that out of so many stories, there is only one that I have read, “Curry Rice: Gaijin Gold; How the British Version of an Indian Dish turned Japanese” by Keiko Ohnuma. I accidentally found it during one browsing and certainly answered my question to my sons on why the Japanese had curry and why my boys liked it so much.
One offshoot of this unique publishing venture was the donation of the book royalties to the Sophie Coe Memorial Prize Fund that gave an annual prize of 1,000 pounds “for an essay, article, paper or self-contained part of a book, or a food history subject.” The award is given during the annual Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery.
Superbly written
That set me off searching my library to find the two books Coe is noted for: “America’s First Cuisines” and “The True History of Chocolate,” written with her husband, Michael Coe, who was an anthropologist specializing in Mayan culture.
I found “The True History of Chocolate” which I had read cover to cover because it was superbly written. I didn’t even know then who the authors were. So this kind of rounds up the Alan Davidson story.
But of his books, it is “A Kipper with My Tea” that I treasure most. Its subtitle is “Selected Food Essays,” a compilation of those that Davidson did for several magazines. I have my favorites.
“Funeral Cookbooks” is about the practice in Thailand of making a small pamphlet of the favorite foods of the departed, their version of our stampita or prayer cards.
“The Giant of the Mekong” is about the big catfish that may not even be considered a catfish because it lacks teeth, caught in the Mekong River by Laotian fishermen who have to do offerings to the various spirits of the river, and when catching, have to hurl insults at each other.
And, of course, “Hallo, Halo-Halo,” his writing on the Filipinos’ “tropical rejoicing syndrome” and about our cookery books, including the one on the recipes of Maria Y. Orosa.
Of his books, it is ‘A Kipper with My Tea’ that I treasure most, as it includes the Filipinos’ ‘tropical rejoicing syndrome’