‘Sometimes, in the search for originality, the most obvious dishes are forgotten,’ says Elizabeth David, the doyenne of cookery, in her book French Provincial Cooking. I often think of this phrase when I’m writing about vintage cookery. So much of food (and food writing, and writing, and media, and life) is trend-driven. It’s all about novelty. I look at the handwritten list of my planned vintage recipes – ‘chocolate mousse, custard slice, beef olives???’ – and have to acknowledge that my particular wheelhouse is anything but original. I try, though, to hold David’s words close: those ‘obvious’ dishes are known for a reason. And their familiarity is part of their appeal.

David was writing, specifically, about oeuf mayonnaise. She was, in fact, apologising for including a recipe for something ‘so basic’, fearing her reader may find such instructions ‘superfluous’.

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Oeuf mayonnaise is such a classic of French bistros that it would be mad to assume universal knowledge of the perfect version. Peculiarly, it hasn’t quite made the jump in the way other bistro classics have: outside of France, steak tartare abounds, croque monsieurs are ten a centime, French onion soup has become universal........

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