Is Elizabeth David's Italian Food still worth reading?
Yes, as long as you treat it as a book to read rather than a manual to follow. Italian Food (1954) is Elizabeth David's tour of regional Italian cooking, written for a Britain where olive oil and garlic were rarities, and her essays on dishes, markets and ingredients are still sharp, opinionated and lovely. The recipes assume you already know how to cook, so pair it with a more hand-holding modern book if you are a beginner.
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Elizabeth David (1913-1992) did more than almost anyone to change what British home cooks thought of as normal food. Her first book, Mediterranean Food, came out in 1950. Italian Food followed in November 1954, after months of research in Italy, and according to Wikipedia's detailed biography its first print run sold out within weeks.
What it covers
David spent most of 1952 travelling around Italy, watching cooks in homes and restaurants and taking notes on how dishes changed from region to region. In Rome she met the painter Renato Guttuso and persuaded him to illustrate the book, which is one reason old copies are worth hunting for.
The book opens with a chapter on the Italian store cupboard: herbs and spices, anchovies, tinned tuna, dried mushrooms, prosciutto, chickpeas, and those two exotic novelties of 1950s Britain, garlic and olive oil. Then come chapters in a familiar order (soups, fish, meat, vegetables, sweets) plus sections that were new to many British readers at the time: pasta asciutta, ravioli and gnocchi, rice, and Italian wine. Between the recipes are her own essays and introductions, and those are what make it a book you can read in an armchair.
How it reads now
The writing has aged better than the shopping list. What made the book radical was that most of the ingredients were hard to find in Britain when it was published. Today you can buy them at any supermarket, so the sense of revelation has gone. What is left is David's voice: precise, impatient with nonsense, sometimes very funny, always clear about what she thinks a dish should taste like.
The recipes are terse. David believed a good cookery writer should leave a little unsaid so readers make their own discoveries. Some reviewers in her day felt she assumed too much, and plenty of modern readers feel the same. You will meet instructions with no times, few warnings and an expectation that you know what a sauce should look like. Confident cooks find this freeing. Nervous cooks find it like being taught to swim by someone already on the far side of the pool.
It is a time capsule, in a good way. You are reading Italian home cooking as a sharp-eyed foreigner saw it in the early 1950s. Some of the regional dishes she records may be harder to find on menus today, and that alone makes it interesting.
Who should read it
- Cooks who already have the basics and want to understand the why and the where behind Italian dishes.
- Anyone who enjoys food writing for its own sake, alongside writers like M.F.K. Fisher.
- People interested in how Britain's eating habits changed after the war.
If you are learning to cook Italian food from scratch, start with a clearer, more step-by-step writer such as Marcella Hazan, and come to David once you can trust your own eye. The vegetable and pasta chapters are a good place to begin either way: use her as a guide to flavour and season rather than a list of instructions.
FAQ
Is Italian Food a recipe book or a food history?
Both, in proportion. It is organised as a cookbook, but the essays and introductions give it the texture of travel and food writing. For a fuller history of Italian cooking, see our page on books about the history of Italian food.
Which of her books should you read first?
If Italy is your interest, Italian Food. Her first book, Mediterranean Food (1950), is the classic starting point for her work as a whole and includes several Italian dishes too.
Are the measurements a problem?
Expect imperial measures, in some editions with metric conversions alongside. Either way the quantities are a guide; David expected you to taste and adjust.
Who illustrated it?
Renato Guttuso, one of the best-known Italian painters of his generation, whose still lifes David admired. She later recalled that he thought the fee absurdly low but did the drawings anyway.
Sources
Written by the Zestasy editors. General information for curious adults, not medical, nutrition or training advice.