Some writers have believed David neglected the cooking of her own country in favour of Mediterranean cuisine. In the humorous magazine "Punch", Humphrey Lyttelton held that she preferred "inaccessible and often indigestible "saucissons"" to "the splendid Cumberland sausage". In 2009 the food writer Tim Hayward accused her of "wide-eyed romantic twaddle", excessively focused on France and the Mediterranean. Chaney comments that when "Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen" was published in 1970, some of David's most ardent admirers were taken aback to find her extolling the British culinary tradition, "at its best ... as rich and rewarding as that of the Mediterranean". Cooper writes that although the change of focus from French and Mediterranean food to English surprised the public, David had been moving towards it for some time.