Jane Grigson - Writing Style

Writing Style

In her obituary for The Independent, Alan Davidson wrote:

Jane Grigson left to the English-speaking world a legacy of fine writing on food and cookery for which no exact parallel exists.... She won to herself this wide audience because she was above all a friendly writer... a most companionable presence in the kitchen; often catching the imagination with a deftly chosed fragment of history or poetry, but never failing to explain the "why" as well as the "how" of cookery.

Like her contemporary Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson's books are known for their witty and sometimes extensive digressions on the history of ingredients and recipes. For example, the introduction to the chapter on pears in her Fruit Book contains a description of:

poire d'angoisse, which was originally an instrument of torture (a pear-shaped metal contraption was pushed into people's mouths and then expanded). Poires d'angoisse were called after this abomination, as they were sharp in the mouth too (hay was put into the cooking water in an attempt to soften the flavour). In the thirteenth-century streets of Paris, sellers went round shouting "poires d'angoisse crier haut" which was I suppose a grim reminder of the connection, "Cry loud the pears of anguish". The phrase "to swallow the pears of anguish" means to suffer humiliations and distress.

She is also frequently opinionated and acerbic in her opinions about foods she does not like. In her Vegetable Book she says, for example, of the beetroot:

We do not seem to have had much success with the beetroot in this country. Perhaps this is partly the beetroot's fault. It is not an inspiring vegetable, unless you have a medieval passion for highly coloured food. With all that purple juice bleeding out at the tiniest opportunity, a cook may reasonably feel that beetroot has taken over the kitchen and is far too bossy a vegetable.

Her books also often frequently contain personal recollections of culinary habits in Northumbria, Wiltshire and Touraine.