Leyel (Mrs. C.F. [i.e. Hilda W.W.])
Green Salads and Fruit Salads,
Including Salad Dressings and Recipes for Salad Vinegars [The Lure of Cookery series.]
Description:
FIRST EDITION,
pp. vii, 88, foolscap 8vo,
original green boards, backstrip and upper board lettered in dark blue, the latter with border stamped in same, some very slight discolouration to extremities and bottom corners very gently knocked, the oval book-label of Elizabeth David to front pastedown, dustjacket a little chipped and nicked, very good
Publication Details:
George Routledge, n.d. [but circa 1925]
Notes: A very pleasing association copy, with the bookplate of Elizabeth David, a laid-in typed note to her (signed 'Janet', undated, and largely concerning laundry, though also presenting a book – perhaps the present volume, which 'Lesley [probably O'Malley] says you might have already') and a sticky note in David's hand, marking the Jamaica Salad recipe 'a possibility'. Hilda Leyel was a key formative influence on David – her 'Gentle Art of Cookery' was one of the first cookbooks that the latter writer owned, a gift from her mother when young. The name of the series over which Leyel presided fo...moreA very pleasing association copy, with the bookplate of Elizabeth David, a laid-in typed note to her (signed 'Janet', undated, and largely concerning laundry, though also presenting a book – perhaps the present volume, which 'Lesley [probably O'Malley] says you might have already') and a sticky note in David's hand, marking the Jamaica Salad recipe 'a possibility'. Hilda Leyel was a key formative influence on David – her 'Gentle Art of Cookery' was one of the first cookbooks that the latter writer owned, a gift from her mother when young. The name of the series over which Leyel presided for this publisher, 'The Lure of Cookery', perhaps indicates its intention to beguile – and David later considered that 'Mrs Leyel's greatest asset was her ability to appeal to the imagination of the young', which she did through a style of romantic simplicity, short in instruction but rich in knowledge, versed in tradition but alert to the domestic fashions of modernity, catering to native tastes but with the sense that such a palette should include influences from around the globe. In her Introduction to 'Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen' (1970), David discusses Leyel's influence at length, and describes herself re-reading many of her books, the present volume amongst them, listing as 'the most attractive' of 'Mrs Leyel's positive virtues [...] her love of fruit, vegetables and salad' and her elevation of them to centre-stage. This work begins with reference to John Evelyn, proceeding to his list of English salad herbs, a nod to Leyel's occupation as a herbalist: she was responsible in large part for reviving in the twentieth-century the tradition of which Culpeper was the apogee. In 1927, she founded the Society of Herbalists and opened her shop, Culpeper House, in Baker Street – and David, in her tribute, acknowledged that Leyel's eminence in this field surpassed her reputation as a cookery writer, even whilst it was in the latter respect that she had felt her influence, with that 'small classic' of 'The Gentle Art of Cookery' and the small host of others to which this book on salads belongs. Some subsequent volumes in the series bore dustjacket designs by the young Kathleen Hale - the present example is unsigned and displays a slightly tamer line than those known examples, but they all display the inexperienced, young woman of the post-War era at whom Leyel's series was targeted. HIDE
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