page_title: A Book of Mediterranean Food
section_title: Context
hierarchical_section_title: A Book of Mediterranean Food / Context
caption_attribution_description: English: Britain Queues For Food- Rationing and Food Shortages in Wartime, London, England, UK, 1945 Men, women and children queue outside a fishmonger, somewhere in London, to buy some fish. The shop appears to be operating like a kiosk: it is all shuttered up, apart from a window from which the fish is sold.
context_page_description: A Book of Mediterranean Food was an influential cookery book written by Elizabeth David in 1950, her first, and published by John Lehmann. After years of rationing and wartime austerity, the book brought light and colour back to English cooking, with simple fresh ingredients, from David's experience of Mediterranean cooking while living in France, Italy and Greece. The book was illustrated by John Minton, and the chapters were introduced with quotations from famous writers.
  At the time, many ingredients were scarcely obtainable, but the book was quickly recognised as serious, and within a few years it profoundly changed English cooking and eating habits.
context_section_description: Returning to postwar England, still with food rationing, after years living in the Mediterranean with its wealth of fresh ingredients, Elizabeth David found life grey and daunting. The food was terrible: "There was flour and water soup seasoned solely with pepper; bread and gristle rissoles; dehydrated onions and carrots; corned beef toad in the hole. I need not go on."
caption: The reality of rationing and austerity: queuing for fish in London, 1945
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