A KIPPER WITH MY TEA: SELECTED FOOD ESSAYS. By Alan Davidson.

1990 1st US edition. 8vo (145 x 215mm). Ppxiv,274. B/w vignette illustrations. Maroon cloth, spine titled in gilt.

Forty-nine articles on food of the best sort, written with "erudition and charm [by] one of Britain's most discerning and authoritative writers on food". Includes the "Giant Gooseberry Competition of Yorkshire, gigantic fish [and] miniature vegetables". Davidson was a career diplomat who joined the Foreign Office after wartime service in the RNVR. Much of his writing explores the cuisine of the places he worked in. His first published book (with Giorgio Bini), Mediterranean Seafood, began life as the privately issued Seafood of Tunisia and the Central Mediterranean, written for his wife while living in Tunis. Davidson also had a spell as ambassador to Laos. Chapters are grouped into the following sections: A personal miscellany; Food science; The good things of life (ingredients); History (British cookery); Seafood - the giant of the Mekong, not yogurt with fish, fish liver in Shetland, sandals from the sea, a fishy tour round the North Sea, seafood through a fish-eye lens, fish in the Bosphorous, the harlot of Marseilles; Asia - the traditions of Laos, more bell-flower root please, plum meal, taking coffee seriously, the size of things to come, hallo halo-halo, sticky fingers, three meals in Phuket, Vietnamense food, the fish sauces of Vietnam and south-east Asia, European eels in Japan; Cheese - British cheeses a historical introduction, the hard cheeses of England, soft cheeses revived, the noble blues, Welsh and Scottish cheeses; Tailpiece, a kipper with my tea.