Food - Bee Wilson celebrates the 21st anniversary of a charmingly chaotic publication
In this year of momentous anniversaries, here's a very small one worth toasting. It's the 21st birthday of Petits Propos Culinaires, a journal co-founded by Elizabeth David, and the major British outlet for scholarly articles on food. This is also the year in which the editors Alan and Jane Davidson give up the helm after 21 years.
Petits propos what? For the uninitiated, the most off-putting thing about this periodical is its name. You expect something in French and very pretentious. PPC isn't either. Alan Davidson explains that the name began as a joke. "Petits propos culinaires" - "little culinary remarks" - was meant to refer knowingly to the kind of Frenchified affectation that food-lovers inclined towards in 1979. The trouble is that, over the years, the inverted commas have got slightly lost.
PPC has always been a charmingly chaotic mixture. The first issue ran Elizabeth David on 18th-century ice creams, an article on the use of coriander in different national cuisines, a recipe for "Crayfish a la Bordelaise" and something on a "Lowland Scots recipe book". PPC is as interested in how to make a low-fat moussaka as it is in the breakfast world of Jane Austen's novels. If you want to know the protein content of blood (20 per cent - surprisingly high) or whether long-cooked eggs taste better, or why people boil gammon with hay, then PPC is the one to consult.
The strange variety of PPC reflects Alan Davidson's character. A former diplomat, he and his wife, Jane, became full- time food writers in 1975 at the encouragement of Elizabeth David (see PPC 47 and 48 for the full story). It's hard to imagine Alan in the Civil Service. He wears outlandish Hawaiian shirts covered in flying fish to show his love of seafood. He pronounces the name Tabitha as Tab-ee-tha. He collects gastronomic friends with the same enthusiasm that he collects videos of black-and-white screwball comedies. But under his amicable aegis, the most exciting and scholarly work on food has been done. PPC is the antithesis of mainstream media food, of glossy, oily pictures and lazy restaurant reviews. The Davidsons have been astonishingly unworldly in caring far more about the accuracy and interest of what they publish than in increasing their (far from colossal) sales.
It seems certain that this eccentric seriousness will continue under the new editor, Tom Jaine, who already runs Prospect Books, the publishers of PPC. Jaine's first issue (
PPC 64) has writing on ancient aphrodisiacs and the British use of ginger. On the cover is a lovely 17th-century engraving of feast-day foods: cakes and pies and decorated poultry. If you lined up the covers of the past 21 years you would get a kaleidoscope of delicious things: pink seaside rock; blue crabs; an orange croquembouche; green, cherry-shaped eggplants. No magazine can have spent more trouble on its design and less on marketing. The enthusiasm is hard to resist.
So happy birthday PPC. To mark the occasion, here is a summery soup from the very first issue:
Jeremiah Tower's Pear and Watercress Soup. Eight ripe pears, two bunches watercress, one litre chicken broth, one lemon, salt, pepper, double cream. Peel and core the pears and cover them in some of the broth to prevent discoloration. Put the peels and cores in 300-400ml of the broth and boil to extract the flavour before straining. Chop and parboil (in the peary stock) all but a handful of watercress, then puree it. Puree the pears in the remaining stock, mix with the watercress, season with lemon, salt and pepper, and chill. Before serving, whisk in as much cream as you like and garnish with the remaining cress leaves, blanched.
You can subscribe to Petits Propos Culinaires by sending a cheque made out to Prospect Books, Allaleigh House, Blackawton, Totnes, Devon, TQ9 7DL. Subscriptions cost £15 for 3 issues, £29 for 6, or £5 for any back issue
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