1960s Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery (1967) Grigson's first book about food and cookery was
Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery, published by
Michael Joseph in 1967. After a brief introduction outlining the history of the pig in European agriculture and cuisine, the main text begins with a "Picnic guide to the charcutier's shop", in which the author details the pork products available in a good French charcuterie. They include dishes ready to eat, such as
rillettes; pâtés; cooked and cured ham (such as
jambons de York and
de Bayonne); and cooked sausages of the
salami and other types. Dishes that require cooking include pigs' trotters; sausages including
andouillettes;
black puddings; and, more expensive,
boudins blancs. Also listed are cuts of fresh pork, from head to tail (
tête and
queue de porc). Later chapters deal with charcuterie equipment; herbs and seasonings; and sauces and relishes. They are followed by four substantial chapters of recipes for terrines, pâtés (cold and hot), and galantines; sausages and boudins blancs; salt pork and hams; and the main cuts of fresh pork. The final four chapters cover the "Extremities"; "Insides"; "Fat"; and "Blood" (black puddings). Throughout, there are illustrative line drawings by M.J. Mott. When the first American edition was published, in 1968, three of the US's leading cookery writers—Julia Child,
James Beard and
Michael Field—called it "the best cook book of the year". In Britain,
Penguin Books published a paperback edition in 1970. The book was out of print for some time in the late 1990s—the food correspondent of
The Guardian encouraged readers to write to the publishers "and bully them into reprinting"—but was reissued in 2001 and (at 2019) has remained in print ever since. In 2001 the chef
Chris Galvin called the book "a masterpiece": :so informative and well written ... it feels that you have someone on hand to help, steering you through the recipe, avoiding unnecessary technical terms and instead using universal words and phrases, e.g. "whirling ingredients together", "simmering and not galloping a stock". Most importantly Grigson encourages you to attempt dishes insisting, for example, that making a sausage is a simple affair then following this statement up with recipe after recipe for saucisse fumé, saucisse de campagne and saussicon sec. Translations of the book have been published in Dutch (
Worst, Paté: en andere Charcuterie uit de Franse Keuken) and—unusually for a book on food by a British author—in French.
1970s Good Things (1971) : one of the six fruits featured in
Good Things The sections of the book deal with fish, meat and game, vegetables and fruit, with a miscellany to conclude. In some of Grigson's later books she dealt exhaustively with specific ingredients: her
Fish Cookery two years later covered more than fifty varieties of fish. Here she deals with five: kippers, lobster, mussels, scallops and trout, writing about her few chosen subjects more expansively than in the later book, and discussing the pros and cons of various recipes. She says of lobsters that there is nothing more delicious, so sweet, firm and succulent, discusses the most humane way of killing them, and although advancing the proposition that they are best eaten hot with only lemon juice and butter on them, she gives the recipes for homard à l'Americaine (quoting
Édouard de Pomiane's view that it is "a gastronomic cacophony") and
Thermidor, as well as
bisque, which she calls "without qualification ... the best of all soups". Grigson adopts the same approach in the other sections, dealing at leisure with favoured ingredients and dishes. Not all her choices are the most frequently seen in other cookery books: in the meat section she devotes eight pages to snails, and ten to sweetbreads, and none to steaks or roasts. Among the six fruits she writes about, apples and strawberries are joined by quince and prunes. She agrees that stewed prunes endured at school or in prison—the "dreadful alliance between prunes and rice or prunes and custard powder"—are best forgotten, and makes her case for the prune as a traditional ingredient in meat and fish dishes, giving as examples beef or hare casseroled with prunes, turkey with prune stuffing, and tripe slowly simmered with prunes. In the final section she covers five French cakes, ice creams and sorbets, and fruit liqueurs.
WorldCat records 21 editions of
Good Things published between 1971 and 2009 in English and translation. The original edition, like the charcuterie book four years earlier, had line drawings by M.J. Mott. A reprint by the
Folio Society in 2009 had illustrations, some in colour, by Alice Tait.
Fish Cookery (1973) The book was first published as ''The International Wine and Food Society's Guide to Fish Cookery'' in 1973, but became widely known in its paperback form with the shorter title, issued by Penguin in 1975. Grigson did not believe that anything is truly original in recipes, and happily included those of other writers in her books, being careful to acknowledge her sources—"There's nothing new about intellectual honesty". Her influences were not exclusively European: among those she credited in her
Fish Cookery (1973) were Claudia Roden's
A Book of Middle Eastern Food, Mary Lamb's
New Orleans Cuisine and James Beard's
Delights and Prejudices. Nevertheless,
Fish Cookery is, of Grigson's books, the one most focused on the British cook, because, as she observes, the same edible birds and quadrupeds are found in many parts of the world, but species of fish are generally more confined to particular areas. Even given that limitation, Grigson urges her British readers to be more adventurous in their choice of fresh fish. She points out that there are more than fifty species native to British waters, not including shellfish or freshwater fish, and she urges cooks to venture beyond "cod and plaice, overcooked and coated with greasy batter". : Among the finest fish in Grigson's view The chapters of
Fish Cookery are "Choosing, Cleaning and Cooking Fish"; "
Court-bouillons, Sauces and Butters"; "Fish Stews and Soups"; "Flat-fish"; "More Fish from the Sea"; "The Great Fish"; "Fish Caught in Fresh Water"; "Shellfish and Crustaceans"; "and "Cured and Preserved Fish". The book concludes with glossaries of fish names and cookery terms and measures. "Great" in the title of the sixth chapter refers to size, rather than particular pre-eminence: it includes
tuna,
swordfish, shark and
sunfish. Grigson ascribes greatness in the qualitative sense only to sole and turbot among sea fish, trout and salmon among fresh-water species, and eel, lobster and crayfish. As well as classics such as sole Véronique,
bouillabaisse,
moules marinière, and lobster Thermidor, Grigson gives recipes for more unusual combinations of ingredients, including cod steaks with Gruyère cheese sauce, herring with gooseberries, scallop and artichoke soup, and prawns in tomato, cream and vermouth sauce. A statement in the section on mussels led to minor controversy some years after publication. Grigson writes that once the mussels are cooked any that do not open should be thrown away. She gives no reason, but many subsequent writers have taken it that eating a closed mussel would be injurious, rather than simply impracticable. The Australian Fisheries Research and Development Corporation published research in 2012 to rebut the assumption. Grigson had completed two-thirds of the text of a revised edition of the book when she died. Her editor, Jenny Dereham, completed the revision, using additional recipes and articles Grigson had published since 1973. It was published with the title ''Jane Grigson's Fish Book
in 1993, in hardback by Michael Joseph and in paperback by Penguin. Reviewing the new edition in The Independent'', Michael Leapman wrote that many of the recipes had been updated to reflect current tastes—"a little less cream and butter"—and remarked on Grigson's exploration of new areas of interest little known to readers of the first edition, such as
sashimi and
ceviche.
English Food (1974) The book has the subtitle, "An anthology chosen by Jane Grigson". As in her earlier books, Grigson made no claim to originality in her recipes, and was scrupulous about crediting those with a known author. The chapters cover soups; cheese and egg dishes; vegetables; fish; meat, poultry and game; puddings; cakes, biscuits and pancakes; and stuffings, sauces and preserves. Line drawings by Gillian Zeiner illustrate details of kitchen techniques, materials and equipment. The introduction outlines Grigson's thoughts on good English cooking and its decline. Another point in the introduction is that whereas in France most of the great cookery writers have been men, in England it is the women writers, such as
Hannah Glasse and
Eliza Acton, who stand out. Many of their recipes are included in subsequent chapters. The introduction to the revised 1979 edition enlarges on the state of English food, and calls for better cookery teaching in British schools. Grigson emphasises the advantages of good, locally produced food, which she says, is not only better but usually cheaper than that offered by the large commercial concerns: "Words such as 'fresh' and 'home-made' have been borrowed by commerce to tell lies." In a study of "The 50 best cookbooks" in 2010,
Rachel Cooke wrote that it was debatable which of Grigson's "many wonderful books" was the best, "but the one for which she will always be most celebrated is
English Food". Cooke quotes the critic
Fay Maschler's view that Grigson "restored pride to the subject of English food and gave evidence that there is a valid regional quality still extant in this somewhat beleaguered cuisine." The book contains mostly English recipes, but draws from time to time on the cuisines of Wales and Scotland. Cooke describes it as "undoubtedly a work of scholarship: carefully researched, wide-ranging and extremely particular" but adds that it also contains "hundreds of excellent recipes, the vast majority of them short, precise and foolproof. Who could resist poached turbot with shrimp sauce, or a properly made Cornish pasty?" Among the puddings in the book are
Yorkshire curd tart, brown bread ice cream,
queen of puddings and
Sussex pond pudding.
English Food won the
Glenfiddich Award for the cookery book of the year, 1974. A new edition, with an introduction by Sophie Grigson, was published by Ebury Press, London, in 2002. Reviewing it,
Lindsey Bareham wrote, "If you don't already own a copy of this seminal book, now is the time to invest in our edible heritage made digestible by one of the finest writers we have ever produced".
The World Atlas of Food (1974) Subtitled "A Gourmet's Guide to the Great Regional Dishes of the World", this 319-page book was published by
Mitchell Beazley, a company specialising in atlases and other extensively illustrated works of reference. Grigson is credited as "contributing editor". James Beard wrote the introduction, titled "An epicurean journey". The book has pages illustrating and describing ingredients of the various areas of the world—fish, meat, vegetables, fungi and fruit. The cuisines of Europe, Africa, Asia, Australasia and the Americas are covered. The American edition was published by Simon & Schuster in 1974. The book was reissued in Australia and the US in 1984 and in Britain in 1988 and was reprinted in 1989.
The Mushroom Feast (1975) s
The Mushroom Feast was published by Michael Joseph in 1975. The book is in six chapters. The first, "The best edible mushrooms", has descriptions of twenty varieties of mushroom, from the familiar cultivated
Agaricus bisporus,
morels,
cèpes,
girolles and
oysters, to the less well known
matsutake,
parasol,
shaggy cap,
wood-blewit and others. Each is illustrated with a line drawing by
Yvonne Skargon, and followed by descriptions of the flavour and basic cooking instructions. The next chapter, dealing with preserved mushrooms, sauces, stuffings, and soups, gives modern and old recipes, including some by Hannah Glasse, Eliza Acton,
Marie-Antoine Carême,
Hilda Leyel and Grigson's mentor and friend Elizabeth David. In the chapter on mushroom main dishes—such as in an open tart or a covered pie, in a gateau with cream, or stuffed with almonds, or baked in the
Genoese style—other ingredients play a subordinate part in the recipes, but are given more prominence in "Mushrooms with fish" and "Mushrooms with meat, poultry, and game". After a section on the principal mushrooms of Japanese and Chinese cooking, an appendix gives five basic recipes for sauces to accompany mushrooms.
WorldCat records 18 editions of the book published between 1975 and 2008.
''Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book'' (1978) ,
asparagus,
swede and
kale For this book Grigson adopted a straightforward alphabetical layout. There are chapters on more than eighty vegetables, from
artichokes to
yams. Most chapters are in three parts: brief historical information about the vegetables, guidance on preparing them, and recipes using them. The author does not play down her own likes and dislikes; she praises artichokes and
asparagus as "the two finest vegetables we can grow", but calls
winter turnips and
swedes "that grim pair", and admits to a lifelong detestation of
kale.
Seakale, on the other hand, she rates highly, not only for its delicate flavour, but as the only vegetable in the entire book native to England. Grigson considered omitting mushrooms from the book, on the grounds that they are not a vegetable and that she had already devoted a whole book to them in 1975, but decided that "leaving them out won't do", and gave them a two-page chapter, covering their choice and preparation, and giving recipes for mushroom soup and mushroom pie. Also included are savoury fruits such as
avocados and tomatoes. As well as ingredients familiar in European cuisine, Grigson includes sections on
bean sprouts,
Chinese artichokes,
okra,
sweet potato,
pignuts and other vegetables less well known among her readership in the 1970s. The longest chapters are those on lettuces (13 pages), spinach and tomatoes (both 18 pages) and potatoes (24 pages). In her preface to the first American edition in 1979, Grigson observed that although British and American cooks found each other's systems of measurement confusing (citing the US use of volume rather than weight for solid ingredients), the two countries were at one in suffering from supermarkets' obsession with the appearance rather than the flavour of vegetables. The book brought its author her first
Glenfiddich Food and Drink Writer of the Year Award and the first of two
André Simon Memorial Prizes.
Food With the Famous (1979) The book has its origins in a series of articles Grigson wrote for ''The Observer's'' colour magazine in 1978, and is described as part cookery book and part social history. Her publisher wrote that she "re-read favourite novels, re-examined pictures in the great galleries, explored houses, letters, journals, and the cookery books used (or written) by her choice of famous men and women". Starting with "the great diarist and salad fancier"
John Evelyn in the 17th century, she traces a chronological development of western cooking. Her other examples are from the 18th century (
Parson James Woodforde), the cusp of the 18th and 19th (
Jane Austen,
Thomas Jefferson, and the
Rev Sydney Smith), the high-19th (
Lord and Lady Shaftesbury,
Alexandre Dumas and
Émile Zola); and on into the 20th "with
Marcel Proust in the gourmet's Paris, and
Claude Monet among the water-lilies at
Giverny". {{multiple image In the introduction to Evelyn's chapter, Grigson describes his contribution to British food—translating the works of
Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie, promoting ice-houses and recording the earliest example of the
pressure cooker. She quotes him on vegetables, for instance on beetroot: "vulgar, but eaten with oil and vinegar, as usually, it is no despicable salad." Evelyn's garden was organised so that mixed green salad could be put on the table every day of the year; Grigson lists the 35 different species from
balm to tripe-madam that Evelyn specified for his salads. For the chapters on the novelists, Grigson gives recipes for dishes mentioned in their books, including white soup and
fricassée of
sweetbread for Jane Austen, asparagus soup
à la comtesse, and fillets of sole with
ravigote sauce for Zola,
brill Radziwill and
boeuf à la mode for Proust, and for Dumas, who published a book about food, she prints his own recipes for cabbage soup, scrambled eggs with shrimps, and several others. Although Grigson's favourite of her works was the 1982 fruit book, she said she had a particular fondness for
Food With the Famous.
1980s The Observer French Cookery School (1980) This book was a spin-off from an
Observer series. Its two authors, Grigson and Anne Willan of La Varenne cookery school in Paris, augmented their
Observer articles for the book. Willan's sections, occupying the majority of the 300 pages, give technical advice on various aspects of cooking, such as boning, making choux pastry, the use of gelatine, and cooking with
bains-marie. A 1991 bibliography describes Grigson's section—a 47-page "Anthology of French cooking and kitchen terms"—as "an alphabetic listing of descriptions written in condensed but detailed prose, full of personal observation; almost a little book in itself".
''Jane Grigson's Fruit Book'' (1982) For Grigson, this book was more fun to write than any of her others. Her particular fondness for fruits caused her to protest in her introduction about the quality offered by large suppliers: The food trade makes the egalitarian mistake, which is also a convenience for itself, of thinking that every food has to be as cheap and inoffensive as every other similar food. This mistake has ruined chicken and potatoes and bread. No wine merchant sells only plonk, no flower shop sticks to daisies. In the matter of vegetables and fruit, we seem often to be reduced to a steady bottom of horticultural
plonk. The layout follows that of the vegetable book of three years earlier: chapters on each fruit, set out alphabetically from apples to water-melon. In between, familiar fruits such as bananas, cherries, pears and strawberries are interspersed with
cherimoyas,
medlars,
persimmons and
sapodillas. There are 46 of these chapters, taking 432 pages. The book finishes with a miscellany of fruit-related topics, such as matching fruits and wines, fruit preserves, and recipes for biscuits suitable to eat with fruit. As well as recipes in which the fruit is the star ingredient, Grigson gives details of many dishes where fruit is combined with meat, poultry or fish, including pheasant with apples, lamb with apricots, sole with banana, quail with cherries, oxtail with grapes, and eel soup with pears. As in the vegetable book, Grigson is clear about her likes and dislikes. "Rhubarb: Nanny-food. Governess-food. School-meal-food." She finds some recipes for it worth including, but falls short of calling them delectable—"merely not too undelectable". Reviewing the book in
Petits Propos Culinaires, Jane Davidson called it "brilliant", adding, "Anecdotes, history, poetry and personal appreciation are all here as well as practical suggestions on how to use both the familiar and less so. ... In
Michelin language,
four stars and
six place settings". Like the Vegetable Book, this one won Grigson a Glenfiddich and an André Simon award.
The Observer Guide to European Cookery (1983) Grigson published
The Observer Guide to European Cookery in 1983. She expanded her original articles from
The Observer into this 256-page book, extensively illustrated by uncredited
Observer photographers. A reviewer commented that one might expect the author, her life based partly in France, to begin with French cuisine, but Grigson explains: :Greece comes first, with classical and Hellenic chefs already theorising about food in terms that do not seem odd today. In terms that make perfect sense. Italy took on the skills of Greece, since well-off Romans employed chefs from Athens just as well-off Northerners have looked to Paris for their chefs. Through Spain, Arab dishes and Arab gardening, as well as new vegetables and foods from America, were handed on to the rest of Europe. Portugal comes in here, in its great phase of travel and discovery. France next, in the perfect, unique position between Mediterranean and Atlantic seas, exactly poised to take advantage of the Renaissance and the New World. In each chapter Grigson mixes the well known and the offbeat. In the opening Greek chapter, recipes for
taramasalata,
moussaka and
dolmades sit alongside hare in walnut sauce and salad of calf brains. Italian recipes include classics such as
osso buco with
risotto milanese,
Parmigiana di melanzane and
vitello tonnato, but also grilled eel, sole with Parmesan, tripe with pig's trotters, and lamb
sautéed with olives. Similar juxtapositions are found in other chapters—Portuguese cuisine beyond sardines, British beyond
steak and kidney pudding, and Scandinavian beyond
smörgåsbord. Among the less well-known dishes described by Grigson are beef fillet with gentleman's sauce, chicken in a dressing-gown, chilled grape soup, quaking pudding, red wine soup, and Siberian ravioli. In the US the book was published in 1983 by Atheneum, under the title ''Jane Grigson's Book of European Cookery''.
The Observer Guide to British Cookery (1984) This 231-page book is similar in layout and approach to the previous year's guide to European cooking, but unlike its predecessor it was published in book form before recipes from it were extracted and printed by the newspaper. The British regions are considered in nine sections, each with an introduction describing the character and ingredients, followed by recipes associated with places within the region. s The South-West chapter includes Cornish bouillabaisse from
Gidleigh Park;
Sedgemoor eel stew;
lardy cake; and "Cornwall's most famous and most travestied dish", the
Cornish pasty—"pronounced with a long 'ah' as in Amen". Among the dishes in the London and the South section are steak and kidney pudding, using beef rump steak and lambs' kidneys;
salt beef; and
bread and butter pudding. Dishes from the Midlands include rabbit and pig tail stew;
Oldbury gooseberry pies;
Bakewell pudding; and
Shrewsbury cakes. The East Anglia section includes turnip pie; stuffed
guinea fowl;
Lincolnshire plum bread; and, for its connection with
Trinity College, Cambridge,
crème brûlée. In the North East chapter Grigson includes recipes for mutton and leek broth, mussel or oyster pudding and
toad in the hole. Dishes from the North West include
potted shrimps,
Lancashire hotpot, Liverpool's
scouse,
Cumberland sausage and the chicken dish
Hindle Wakes. Throughout the book Grigson includes lesser-known dishes alongside famous classics. The chapter on Scotland has recipes for
Scotch broth,
Haggis,
Atholl brose and
shortbread alongside
Scotch woodcock and the sheep's head broth
Powsowdie. Among the Welsh dishes,
cawl and
Welsh rabbit are joined by caveach (pickled mackerel) and
Lady Lanover's salt duck. In the final chapter, Ireland,
Irish stew and
soda bread are included alongside nettle soup and
boxty (potato pancakes). Each chapter concludes with a section contributed by Derek Cooper on "Regional drink". For the English regions and Wales the drinks are mostly beers and ciders, with some wines in the south.
Sloe gin is included for
Cumbria as are
whisky for Scotland and
whiskey and
stout for Ireland.
Exotic Fruits and Vegetables (1986) The illustrations play a particularly large part in this book, and the artist, Charlotte Knox, is given equal billing on the covers of both the British and the American editions. The book is described by its publisher as "An illustrated guide to fruits and vegetables from the world's hotter climates." Grigson added notes on the choice, preparation, and culinary use of each fruit or vegetable, and recipes using them. These include
mango and
carambola salad, mango and
paw paw tart, persimmon fudge, and grey mullet with
pomegranate sauce in the fruit chapters, and in the vegetable sections,
plantain and chicken,
snake gourd Malay style,
drumstick curry with prawns, and yam and goat meat pottage. The book concludes with sections on 14 herbs and spices, from banana leaf to turmeric. A US edition (1987) was published by Henry Holt as
Cooking With Exotic Fruits and Vegetables.
Short books and booklets Cooking Carrots (1975) and Cooking Spinach (1976) These two booklets, of 36 pages each, were written for Abson Books, Bristol. They follow the same pattern: brief guidance on choosing, buying and preparing the vegetable, followed by 37 recipes apiece. Both books conclude with advice on growing the vegetable. The spinach book was originally sold with a packet of seeds attached to the cover.
The Year of the French (1982) This booklet (16 pages) containing six recipes by Grigson, originally published in
The Radio Times, was issued to accompany the
BBC Television series of the same name, "A calendar of French life in 12 film portraits". Each section of the booklet has a one or two-page introduction by Grigson relating the recipe to a representative French person shown in the series, from the driver of a
TGV to the octogenarian head of a
beaujolais wine-growers collective.
Dishes from the Mediterranean (1984) This publication is a slim (96-page) hardback, with numerous coloured photographs and line drawings of dishes. It was published by Woodhead-Faulkner for the supermarket chain
J. Sainsbury. A new and enlarged edition was published in paperback the following year; it was reissued in 1991 with the title
The Cooking of the Mediterranean. The book contains chapters on Mediterranean ingredients; sauces and relishes; soups; first courses and
meze dishes; fish; meat, poultry and game; rice and bread; and sweet dishes. In addition to descriptions and some historical notes, Grigson includes practical advice such as, for preparing
fegato alla veneziana, "Half-freeze the liver so that it is solid enough to cut into thin, tissue-paper slivers". and for a chicken casserole with fifty cloves of garlic (''poulet aux cinquante gousses d'ail'') reassurance about the number of garlic cloves: "the purée they make is delicious and unidentifiable".
The Cooking of Normandy (1987) This book, published for Sainsbury's, follows the pattern of the earlier Mediterranean publication. It is a 96-page, extensively illustrated addition to the "Sainsbury Cookbook" series. Line drawings by Mandy Doyle show details of some of the techniques described in the text. The sections cover ingredients and specialities; soups and first courses; fish and shellfish; meat, poultry and game; and desserts and drinks, with a short epilogue. In her introduction Grigson writes, "For me, Normandy cooking is a return to good, basic home dishes, with the added pleasure of tracking down ingredients of the highest quality." Although the book was published for and sold by a supermarket chain, Grigson's recipes include dishes for which such stores would not be expected to stock key ingredients, such as saddle of rabbit (she suggests using chicken if rabbit is not available) for
lapin à la moutarde and
sorrel for
fricandeau à la oseille (mentioning spinach as a substitute if necessary).
Contributions to books by others 's 17th-century paintings on which Grigson comments in
The Fruit, Herbs and Vegetables of Italy A bibliography published in
Petis Propos Culinaires in 1991 lists substantial contributions by Grigson to books by other writers: the introduction to
The Book of Ingredients by Aidan Bailey,
Elizabeth Lambert Ortiz and Helena Radecke; one of five introductory essays in
The Shell Guide to France, in which she offers guidance on food shops in France—poissonerie, pâtisserie, supermarché etc.—and how to shop in them; and a foreword, of about 1600 words, to
The French Cheese Book by
Patrick Rance. In her foreword to
Gillian Riley's new translation of
Giacomo Castelvetro's 1614 book
The Fruit, Herbs and Vegetables of Italy Grigson describes her acquaintance with Castelvetro's work and with the paintings of
Giovanna Garzoni which figure largely in the illustrations to the new edition. WorldCat lists introductions by Grigson to five other books:
The Elle Cookbook (later republished as
The Art of French Cuisine); the British edition of
The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook by
Alice Waters; Francis Bissell's ''A Cook's Calendar
; A Definitive Catalogue of Toiletries and Comestibles'' by
Tessa Traeger and Mimi Errington; and a new edition of Geoffrey Grigson's ''The Englishman's Flora''.
Posthumously-published anthologies The Enjoyment of Food: The Best of Jane Grigson (1992) This 464-page anthology of recipes from Grigson's books was compiled by Roy Fullick and published by Michael Joseph. In a preface Fullick writes that it is intended "both as a tribute to Jane Grigson's culinary skills and scholarship and as a practical cookery book". The book has an introduction by Elizabeth David, recalling her friendship with Grigson and reminding readers that although it was now taken for granted that Grigson was a classic cookery writer, she had burst on the culinary scene in the late 1960s when "the clarity of the writing, and the confident knowledge ... displayed by this young author were new treats for all of us". David comments that "this varied yet balanced compilation" would remind readers what a loss the cookery world had sustained by Grigson's premature death and inspire them to acquire more of Grigson's works. "Hers are books which can be read in the comfort of one's sitting room as well as used in the kitchen". The main text is in eight sections, with the titles "At home in England"; "At home in France"; "Charcuterie", "The Mediterranean", "The Europeans", "The Americas", "India and the Far East" and "Treats and celebrations". There are recipes from writers of the past such as Eliza Acton, Hannah Glasse,
Maria Rundell and
Auguste Escoffier, and contemporaries including Elizabeth David,
Richard Olney, Julia Child, Alice Waters,
Antonio Carluccio and Grigson's daughter Sophie. The recipes are interspersed with Grigson's customary historical background information: there are appearances by
Lord Byron,
Chaucer,
Casanova,
Louis XIV, and Evelyn, Sydney Smith and others from
Food with the Famous. The book was reissued in 2015 as
The Best of Jane Grigson: The Enjoyment of Food by Grub Street publishers, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Grigson's death.
''Jane Grigson's Desserts'' (1993) This is one of two books of Grigson recipes published simultaneously by Michael Joseph. It is a 92-page hardback, in a small-page format of . It is illustrated throughout with line drawings and contains 50 dessert recipes, all taken from previously published Grigson books. Included are some old recipes such as
Robert Southey's gooseberry pie and Elizabeth Raffald's orange custards, and many from overseas (redcurrant tart from Austria, strawberry fritters from France, and sweet pumpkin from Turkey) as well as British favourites like
summer pudding.
''Jane Grigson's Soups'' (1993) Uniform with the preceding volume, the book contains 50 recipes from earlier books by Grigson. Well-known classic soups such as bouillabaisse,
gazpacho and
cock-a-leekie are interspersed with more unusual recipes including apricot and apple, red onion and wine, and cucumber and sorrel.
Puddings (1996) This is a 64-page paperback, in a small format (approximately
A6) issued one of the "Penguin 60s series" of miniature books along with, among others, Elizabeth David's
Peperonata and Other Italian Dishes, and a collection of Sophie Grigson's recipes, ''From Sophie's Table''. Like the 1993 desserts collection, above, it reused material from previously published books by Grigson. ==Style, reputation and legacy==