Before David
Sir: I do not know Digby Anderson's age, or when he first became interested in cooking, but it is not strictly true that serious cooks had to go to Europe to buy their cooking dishes before the opening of Elizabeth David's original shop, and the subsequent proliferation of often obnox- ious 'kitchen shops' in every market town in the land (Food, 8 November). There was always the marvellous Madame Cadec in Soho — an Aladdin's cave of delights, where serious cooks would journey from all over the country. She was the first to sell the Gras et Maigre sauceboat here. There were, and still are, the 'chefs shops' in Soho, who supplied the restaurants with their batteries de cuisine — also some of our finest painters with chefs checked cotton trousers, for wearing in their stu- dios. Besides these, Peter Jones, of Sloane Square, were selling the best Provençal oval and oblong ovenproof pottery dishes, in most sizes, quite soon after the war, certainly by the earliest Fifties.
Deirdre Levi
Austins Farm, Stonesfield, Oxford
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