Cooking with Mrs David

Stansted Park, West Sussex, from 8th September to 1st December 2024

‘If I had to choose one woman this century who had brought about the greatest improvement in English life, my vote would go to Elizabeth David’

Auberon Waugh

Opening alongside the inaugural South Downs Food Festival (14–15 September 2024), Stansted Park Foundation and the Elizabeth David Estate are bringing to life Elizabeth David’s working kitchen in the Edwardian kitchen at Stansted House.

Through the installation of original furniture and cooking equipment used by David, visitors will imagine themselves at home with Britain’s greatest food writer and in the room in which she planned her ground-breaking cookery books and tested recipes on friends and family.

David moved into to 24 Halsey Street, London, in 1951. For almost three decades her kitchen in a garden extension became a studio or laboratory for her work: food preparation, writing and socialising all took place there, at a rough pine table overlooked by dressers, cupboards and her trusty New World gas cooker. In 1979 her nephew Johnny Grey designed a second kitchen (the ‘Winter kitchen’) in the basement of the house, with custom-built furniture and more comfortable space for writing and relaxing.

The installation at Stansted Park includes objects from both kitchens. A large French armoire and dresser were used to store and display, at various times, glassware, stoneware, decorative plates and cooking pans; the former appeared on the cover of Penguin paperback editions of French Country Cooking (1951). A table from David’s Winter kitchen evokes the room in which, later in her life, David often spent much of her day – on the tabletop her constant ashtray, her Nescafe set-up and a bottle of a favourite Muscat.

The display at Stansted Park also includes crockery, earthenware, cooking utensils and a Le Creuset terrine once used by David. Widely celebrated for having transformed the cooking habits of the nation, not least through her focus on Mediterranean and French food, she also impressed on her readers the need for high-quality kitchenware. She collected vessels and implements as she travelled, employing them in her own kitchen; and from 1965 began to import and stock objects from Le Creuset and other manufacturers at Elizabeth David Limited, her influential shop in Chelsea.

Also shown at Stansted Park are a selection of cookery books once owned by David; photographs of her in her kitchen; and archival material from Johnny Grey relating to the design of the Winter kitchen and her Dream Kitchen, a project for inclusion in Terence Conran’s first book on kitchens. The display will be enlivened by exhibition captions written by Grey and by Dr Thomas Marks, associate fellow of the Warburg Institute, London, who is planning a museum exhibition about David’s cultural impact on post-war Britain.

Elizabeth David (1913–92) was the most influential British food writer of the 20th century. As an authoritative, ever-engaging food journalist and the author of The Book of Mediterranean Food (1950), French Country Cooking (1951), Italian Food (1954), Summer Cooking (1955) and French Provincial Cooking (1960), she shaped the culinary aspirations and activities of generations of domestic cooks and restaurateurs. Her later publications, including Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen (1970) and English Bread and Yeast Cookery (1976) established her as a forceful, original scholar in the emerging discipline of food history and a key figure in the revival of English culinary traditions.

Elizabeth David Estate

In 2022 Johnny Grey was invited to take over the literary executorship of the estate. He wants to bring her writing to new generations and re-examine her legacy. The estate will also be inviting young writers to enter an annual food-themed essay competition with a prize.

About Stansted Park Foundation

Part of the South Downs National Park, the estate stands in 1,800 acres of landscaped parkland and ancient forest. The current Stansted House is an outstanding Edwardian building constructed to the footprint of a 17th-century house destroyed by fire in 1900. The house has one of Britain’s best examples of life below stairs, with room upon room laid out as it would have been in the house’s heyday. The high-ceilinged, stand-alone kitchen and its associated rooms (including the pantry and pastry/still room) house an exceptional collection of largely 19th-century and Edwardian equipment for the preparation and presentation of the elaborate dishes for house parties.

South Downs Food Festival

The South Downs Food Festival will be launched by Dame Prue Leith on September 14 & 15th. It will bring together food enthusiasts, chefs, food writers, campaigners and artisan producers for a weekend of gastronomic delights and stimulating talks. Please visit the website southdownsfoodfestival.com for further information or Eventbrite for tickets. Entry to Stansted House for the exhibition during the Festival will be half price (£5).

Click to view Press Release

Contact