Harvest of the Cold Months

'A splendid tale of human ingenuity in the service of taste, sedulously researched and told with great flair.' Loyd Grossman Sunday Times Author of such cookery classics as Italian Food and French Provincial Cooking, Elizabeth David (1913-1992) found that the literature of cookery, as well as the practical side, was of absorbing interest, and she studied it throughout her life. Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen was published in 1970, followed by English Bread and Yeast Cookery, for which she won the Glenfiddich Writer of the Year award, in 1977. At the time of her death in 1992 she was working on this equally epic study of the use of ice, the ice-trade and the early days of refrigeration, which was published posthumously in 1994 as Harvest of the Cold Months. 'An awe-inspiring feat of detective scholarship, the literally marvellous story of how human beings came to ingest lumps of flavoured frozen matter for pleasure ... There is much, much more - about the making and breaking of reputations, the founding of Parisian café culture, the great and rivalrous confectioners of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century London, about Russian ice-cream (surprisingly superior) and Persian sherbets ... sumptuous.' Independent on Sunday 'This survey of the use of ice in cookery takes us on a fascinating journey from 1581, where in Florence they put snow in the wine glasses, to that modern phenomenon, the growth of the ice-cream business. A scholarly social history, which makes a fitting finale to the work of the greatest of our writers on foods and its contexts.' Harpers & Queen

Elizabeth David (1913-1992) was one of the most successful food writers of the twentieth century. She discovered her taste for good food and wine when, as a student at the Sorbonne, she lived with a French family for two years. After returning to England she made up her mind to learn to cook, so that that she could reproduce for herself and her friends some of the food that she had come to appreciate in France. Subsequently she lived in France, Italy, Greece, Egypt and India, learning and writing about the local dishes and cooking them in her own kitchen. Her first book, Mediterranean Food, signalled the start of a dazzling writing career, and was followed by many others, now considered classics, such as French Country Cooking, and Italian Food. The publication of French Provincial Cooking in 1960 confirmed her position as the most inspirational and influential cookery writer in the English language, and she was the recipient of many awards. Elizabeth David was also interested in the literature of cookery, and at the time of her death she was working on a study of the use of ice, the ice-trade and the early days of refrigeration, published posthumously as Harvest of the Cold Months.