A Catalan Cookery Book
By (author) Irving Davis Edited by Patience Gray
Paperback (Published)
(June 2002)
ISBN: 9780907325925
8.27 x 10.28 inches
Price: $25.00
In stock
There are eight main chapters covering soups; omelettes; pasta; snails; sea food; meat; salads and vegetables; and sweets presenting all-in-all, sixty receipes, taking in a summer and winter drink along the way.
The author of A Catalan Cookery Book was Irving Davis, a connaisseur of priceless manuscripts and early printed books, a gourmet and a renowned cook. An incomplete manuscript recovered after his death, it was edited by his friend Patience Gray, author of Honey from a Weed. Irving called his recipes ‘impossible’ because he despaired at substitution, or derogation from the original. His ‘Macaroni in the oven’ calls for the blood of a chicken, other dishes are equally demanding. However, in the time since it was first written, authentic provisions and materials have become more available to cooks in many countries, making the book much less ” impossible”. As his friends and guests noted, at Irving’s table, the mechanics that went into the creation of his dishes creation -forethought, selection, trouble, timing- were erased by the disarming simplicity of the outcome, which gave rise only to pleasure and delight. Irving’s dishes were an invocation to the ideal; his method of presenting them celebrated his Mediterranean past. There are eight main chapters covering soups; omelettes; pasta; snails; sea food; meat; salads and vegetables; and sweets presenting all-in-all, sixty receipes, taking in a summer and 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.
Irving Davis (1889-1967) was educated at Cambridge University and thereafter lived for several yearsin Florence, joining an expatriate community of poets, writers, aesthetes and bon viveurs, By 1911 had opened an antiquarian bookshop which later expanded to premises in London, where he later returned to live and run his business, and where he was known as a gastronome and fabled cook. Along the way, he had acquired a copy of a 14th century Catalan book, one of the oldest known European collections of recipes, for his friend the sculptor Apel.les Fenosa. This rare book triggered a life-long love of Catalonia. Davis met the author Patience Gray in 1957 and it was she who eventually edited and, along with other friends of his, privately published (the printrun was only 165 copies) the manuscript that became The Catalan Cookbook which Prospect later reissued. Patience Gray’s Honey from a Weed, devotes a chapter (Homage to a Classic Cook) to describing their shared travels and meals at his home.
The engravings in the book were done by the artist Nicole Fenosa, wife of the scuptor.
- By (author) Irving Davis
- Edited by Patience Gray
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