Charles Campion

“It could be said that European civilisation – and Chinese civilisation too – has been founded on the pig” – this is the first sentence of Jane Grigson’s introduction to her book Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery. I have a good many cookbooks but this is probably my favourite. It may not have the magnificent coloured photography so beloved by modern publishers but instead there are simple line drawings that are laden with information. Grigson’s writing is erudite, clear, informative and lyrical. Her books come from an era when scholarship was expected of writers rather than being a rarity worthy of note. Leaf through French Pork Cookery and there are hundreds of recipes – how to use caul fat; what to do with a pig’s spleen; black and white puddings; pork terrines; brains; Bath chaps. Between the covers there’s a storehouse of knowledge. Jane Grigson believed that every pork joint would benefit from an overnight stay in brine. I have tried this and, like most of her techniques and recipes, it works.  That’s the salient point about Jane Grigson’s writing it is always clear, always helpful, always a joy. What a wonderful legacy to leave. Thank you.

Susan Campbell

I have perhaps half of the dozen or so books on food and cookery written by Jane Grigson, and of those half-dozen the one I most often turn to is her Vegetable Book, first published in 1978.

What makes it stand out from all the hundreds of books by other authors on the same subject is, I believe, the fact that Jane was married to Geoffrey Grigson, a botanical historian. With him at her elbow, and his collection of botanical books at her disposal, this book is a not just a collection of recipes but a compendium of culinary plant history. This, for me, makes the book just that much more enjoyable, because the history and cultivation of fruit and vegetables are the two subjects with which I have been occupied for the past 35 years.

And the moment I wrote this last sentence, I realised that the publication date of The Vegetable Book just precedes the time when I began my exploration of the history of the walled kitchen garden. That date, plus her infallible instructions for the preparation and cooking of virtually every vegetable known to cooks past and present, explains the amount of use I have made of that particular book by Jane. It is really well-worn.

The curious thing is that my copy of her Fruit Book, which she says was ‘more fun to write than any of the others’ and was written only three years after her Vegetable Book, shows nothing like the same amount of wear and tear. Yet it carries the same format, with erudite introductions to each subject from Apple to Watermelon. I can only suppose that I don’t care to cook with fruit as much as I do with vegetables, but this book too, makes delightful and informative reading.

I met Jane very occasionally, and wish I had taken up her constant invitations to visit her in Trôo, but I was fairly busily engaged in motherhood at the time. My favourite memory of her is at some sort of cookery demonstration where a barely teenage girl was her assistant. Jane introduced her as ‘My daughter, Sophie, a great help, and she’s going to be a brilliant cook too’.

Lynda Brown

Looking back, it would be impossible to overstate the importance Jane had in my career as a food writer.

It all began with the paperback edition of Good Things. This was the second cookbook I’d bought – I’m looking at it now – and it cost me – £1.10. I liked the sound of the title; flicking through it, loved the way it was organized ‚Äì an eclectic mix of ingredients and techniques, but most of all I loved the way it was written. My hunger to know everything I could about food matched my interest in cooking, and Jane’s effortless scholarly style combined with her ability to make you want to eat everything she talked about had me hooked from the first.

Good Things changed my life. Ironically, despite my fresh-faced enthusiasm, I already knew there were so many things I didn’t particularly want to cook, had no appetite for dinner parties, and much preferred whatever was growing in our garden to anything else, however trendy. It was Good Things that gave me confidence to cook the way I wanted to, and not to worry about the rest.

But that was just the start: Good Things led me to Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking, and Summer Food; Claudia Roden’s Middle Eastern Food; and Edward Bunyard’s Anatomy of Dessert. Through Good Things I also discovered Eliza Acton, Hannah Glasse, and the history of food, the book whetted my appetite for salting meat, charcuterie and wild mushrooms, and made me wish I’d been to France. Indeed, Jane Grigson and Good Things lit up so many lights in my head I could have serviced the whole of the North East.

I suppose it was inevitable, then, that when, as a naive housewife in Stockton-on-Tees, I decided to have a go and wrote my first piece Basil is Best, I sent it off to Jane Grigson at the Observer, asking sweetly how does a housewife get started?

To my utter amazement,Jane wrote back, explaining that though she wrote for the Observer, she had no say in its editorial content, but she had enjoyed the piece and would forward it to her editor at the Observer, Paul Levy, as he also worked for House & Garden.

House & Garden had a private cook’s column: Basil is Best got published with a photo of me grinning insanely under the dark North East skies in our veg garden with my 4 Marran chickens as an entourage.

As any fledging food writer with no journalistic experience will tell you, apart from not being able to believe your luck, being published is like having a blood transfusion. It gives meaning, purpose and focus to your passion, and enables you to put all the thoughts running around your head down on paper, and share them with the outside world. Indirectly, Jane had not only channelled the direction of my all-consuming passion, but had kick-started my life’s work, too.

I was then fortunate to win the Guardian’s Mouton Cadet cookery competition (right up my street: they gave you a list of ingredients and you had to turn them into a starter and main course). Shortly after that (I think), I got a call out of the blue from David Higham literary agency asking if I’d like them to represent me; Chatto & Windus then followed asking if I’d like to write a book. Both had come via Jane’s recommendation ‚Äì whom, by the way, I didn’t meet or talk to until much later. David Higham led to a column in the Daily Telegraph for a time, and Chatto & Windus to my first major book, Fresh Thoughts on Food. All thanks to Jane.

It was around this time,too, that Jane wrote explaining that she was writing her Observer Guide to British Cookery and did I know any producers who might be interesting for her to know about? Did I just! Seeking out traditional foods and artisan producers was, for me, on a par with finding buried treasure and something else I was busting to share. Here was my chance to spread the word about Wabberthwaite ham, Yorksire oatcakes, Cotherstone and Swaledale cheese, the Gooseberry Show at Egton Bridge, elder (boiled and pressed cow’s udder ‚Äì the ‚Äòspam’ of West Yorkshire), Whitby’s Mecca of fish and chips, The Magpie – all these and more came tumbling out like a torrent.

Jane’s acknowledgement in British Food sounds like I helped her; but actually, it was the other way around. That she even asked me, let alone trusted my judgement meant more to me personally than anything ‚Äì but that is not the point. It taught me that one doesn’t need to be a famous food writer to make a difference: simply by supporting the things we believe in is ultimately what counts.

I guess most people contributing to a record of Jane’s influence would have known her well. I didn’t. I can’t even remember when I first met her ‚Äì it would have been at the Oxford Food Symposium, but I did visit her briefly at her home in Wiltshire. We had a nice chat and a cup of tea; my last memory of Jane is leaning on her garden gate waving me good-bye ‚Äì with me, yet again, grinning insanely, not believing my luck.

It seems right to me, therefore, to finish where I started, with Good Things. I’ve subsequently spent a good part of my food writing career writing about organic food and farming. How food is produced, the wider implications of the food debate, and what does or doesn’t constitute good food and good cooking is as important to me as the recipe. In short, I have become radicalized in the best sense of the word. But you know what? It’s all there in Jane’s introduction.

Catherine Brown

She was in France, waiting to be served in a charcuterie in Avallon, with time to gaze at the wonderful display of produce: hunks of farm-made butter; sausages and hams. When she noticed ‘in astonishment’ some very pricy pates. How could the burgers of this small town afford them? She just wanted something for a picnic, so bought some brawn. But her curiosity was aroused. Later, she experimented with a French recipe for sweetbread pate, and discovered why the people of Avallon happily pay such high prices.

It’s just one of her recipes in Good Things (1971)  ‘….not a manual of cookery but about enjoying food.’  I bought some sweetbreads. Never cooked or eaten them before, but made her pate. It was such a success that I decided to join this new food writer on more of her culinary journeys.

I didn’t just enjoy her food, but also her writing. She stimulated the imagination. Weaving into the text the origins and settings of foods to give context and authenticity.

I met her for the first time in 1984 at the launch of British Cookery in the Dorchester Hotel. There was a selection of pre-lunch eats. Anton Mosimann was circulating with a tray of fish-and-chips:a small portion, seasoned with salt and vinegar, in a paper poke with an outside newspaper wrapping. I didn’t know anyone. But as we went in to lunch, she took me to her table and put me between her daughter, Sophie,and Patrick Rance. Afterwards, she introduced me to her husband, Geoffrey, and to Alan and Jane Davidson who became friends.

We met again a few years later in Aberdeenshire on a trip to investigate the provenance of Aberdeen Angus cattle.Alex Barker joined us and we set off to a farm to see the black cattle in the fields.

She was adept at raising the issues. Non-confrontational, but firmly focussed on, in this case, what was happening to native breeds in Scotland? Why introduce the larger, leaner foreign breeds when it was the pure-bred native, fat-marbled beef which had all the flavour and quality?

We went to an auction market for meat buyers, many from London, who were bidding for whole carcasses and she followed-up with them on other issues of feeding, conditions, what they were looking for, and also time of hanging. We ended up in a butchers’ shop buying AA beef ourselves, and asking more questions.

I asked her some questions too. She was eleven at the beginning of the war, living in the North East of England, during war-time rationing. One of her most hated food memories of this time was the yellow turnip (swede) which Scots call a neep. As far as this vegetable was concerned nothing could turn it into a good thing, though she conceded that mashed through potatoes, it was maybe an ok partner for a haggis.

Rosemary Barron

My copy of Jane Grigson’s wonderful book, Good Things, is now in five parts. Its dull, amber pages are curled inside a paper cover that’s almost unreadable and its spine is in pieces. In the 37 years I’ve owned it, I think I’ve made every recipe, some of them dozens of times. My 1968 copy of The Art of  Charcuterie is doing a little better – it’s only in two pieces, and opens at my favourite recipe, cassoulet.  How can I thank someone who has given me so much pleasure for such a long time?

I did once have the opportunity to thank Jane.  We met in San Francisco, at the home of the inestimable Mary Risley, owner of Tante Marie’s Cooking School.  But I’ve an uncomfortable feeling that I didn’t make clear my appreciation, or tell her how much I enjoyed her writing and her recipes. My excuse is that I was young. I was probably also tongue-tied, for I was thrilled to meet the author of a book that I loved.  If I’d know then of all the pleasure that I had ahead of me – the hundreds and hundreds of meals I’ve enjoyed because of her – I wonder what I’d have said.

Jane’s books are on an easily-reachable, well-used bookshelf, where I keep the books with recipes I trust.  It’s the place I go to whenever I want to make something special, something good.  Her books inspire me, and they are the first ones I reach for when I want more information on an ingredient or cooking technique.  I’m still learning from them, and I’m still enjoying every minute I use them.  Thank you, Jane.

Paul Bailey

I met Jane Grigson in the summer of 1975, as the result of a review I wrote of her husband Geoffrey’s book Britain Observed in the New Statesman. Geoffrey was, and remains, one of my literary heroes, not least for his fiercely independent spirit and his talent for expressing considered opinions that went against the fashionable grain. It would become apparent in the years to come that Jane loved him for those very same qualities. He said things, she confided in me once, she would never dare to say, however much she wanted to.

Jane was Geoffrey’s third,and last, wife. He was her senior by almost 23 years, but the age difference didn’t matter to her. In her late 20s she had fallen for the art critic and curator Bryan Robertson, with whom she worked in a London gallery, but she soon realized it was a hopeless infatuation when she discovered he was gay. (In the last year of her life I reunited Jane and Bryan at a lunch I prepared for them. It was a joyous occasion, enlivened by gossip and laughter. I have seldom been such a happy listener.) Bryan had hoped that Jane would find her ideal older man one day, and so it was to be. Jane, who had admired Geoffrey’s work – his study of Samuel Palmer and his Shell guides to birds and flowers, especially – when she was a schoolgirl, thought she was the luckiest woman in the world after meeting him and learning that her feelings for him were reciprocated.

The Grigson family was in something  close to disarray when Jane and Geoffrey married. If anyone knew how to soothe the famous curmudgeon’s savage breast, it was the bright young woman from Sunderland. She moved into the house he owned at Broad Town in Wiltshire and transformed it into a loving place. It seemed that she would be content for ever with her early married life, as she typed and corrected Geoffrey’s manuscripts. Everything was to change in the 1960s when one of their neighbours in Troô, in Loir-et-Cher, in France, asked Jane to be his secretary and researcher. Adey Horton was late delivering a book on charcuterie and French pork cookery he had been commissioned to write for a London publisher. His agreed delivery date was already history when Jane agreed to come to his assistance. Horton was so impressed with her skills that he eventually handed the entire project over to her. And that is how her career as a food writer began – accidentally. If Horton had been more diligent, Jane would have merited nothing grander than finding her name in the Acknowledgements.

That first of her scholarly and approachable books was reviewed glowingly by Elizabeth David in the Sunday Times and achieved the rare distinction of being translated into French. It has become the standard work on the subject. Good Things, which came out in 1971, is my own favourite, not least because of the recipe for the wonderful curried parsnip soup she invented. For my mother’s eighty-seventh birthday I cooked Honeycomb Mould, the pudding she rescued from the Victorian nursery. It is made with the juice and rind of lemons, with eggs, gelatine, sugar, cream and Guernsey milk. It has a cap of lemon jelly and beneath that a band of opaque cream jelly, and a honeycombed spongy base. My mother, who had worked in service from the age of 13, remembered the cook preparing it for the children of her employer in the grand house in Hampshire where she was first employed. That was before the First World War. She had never seen nor eaten it since then.

Jane was touched by this story. She liked it when food had a human and historical significance in people’s lives. Her books and weekly articles for the Observer brought in the kind of money that Geoffrey, who had scraped together a living as a reviewer and anthologist for decades, had never dreamed of earning. He basked in her success. The meals I had with the two of them in Geoffrey’s beautifully designed garden at Broad Town are among my happiest memories.

After Geoffrey’s death in November 1985, Jane lost some of her sparkle, though she put on a show of cheerfulness in public. She still used the word’daft’, which she pronounced with a flat Geordie ‘a’, whenever she found something to laugh at. In the spring of 1989, I went with her on an eating tour of Scotland, to the highlands and lowlands. These were days of unalloyed pleasure, as we met chefs and restaurateurs and growers. I remember a picnic we shared at Loch Ness. The monster was in absentia, but there was a seabird that gobbled bread, cheese and salami as it perched on the bonnet of the car.’Geoffrey would have identified it immediately’ she said. She opened a bottle of non-alcoholic wine someone had given her and poured us a glass each. After a couple of sips, she remarked’It’s disgusting, isn’t it? Let’s have the real thing.’ So we did.

Jane died on March 12, 1990, the eve of her 62nd birthday, She had been anticipating death from cervical cancer for at least two years. In those final months, her chosen expression was’Sod it all’, with or without an accompanying laugh. Waking from a coma, she saw her beloved sister Mary weeping at her bedside.’Oh, you silly cow’ were her last words.

She was my best and dearest friend for a precious time. I think of her every day. How could I not? Her generous heart and soul are there in my kitchen, permanent tenants.

(This piece first appeared in ‘The Oldie’ in March 2015)

Darina Allen

My Christmas present from my husband in 1971 was Jane Grigson’s newly published ‘Good Things’ cookbook, I was absolutely thrilled, I just loved it and read it from cover to cover. I loved M.J. Mott’s line drawings and had a conjured up a clear image in my mind of what Jane would look like from the illustrations in the book. Can you imagine how amazed I was when I eventually met the real life cuddly version many years later in Ballymaloe.

Good Things is still one of my most treasured cookbooks and I’ve cooked virtually everything in the book including Priddy Oggys, Hannah Glasse’s Rabbit Casserole, Salt Mutton and a selection of ratafias. Several of her much loved recipes e.g. Terrine aux Herbs and Gateau Pithivier have been absorbed into our repertoire at Ballymaloe House.

Consequently, Jane is often referred to in our conversation and constantly remembered with great fondness.