While running the shop, David wrote another full-length book, "Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen" (1970). It was her first book in a decade and the first of a projected series on English cookery to be called "English Cooking, Ancient and Modern". She had decided to concentrate on the subject while recuperating from her cerebral haemorrhage in 1963. The book was a departure from her earlier works and contained more food history about what she called "the English preoccupation with the spices and the scents, the fruit, the flavourings, the sources and the condiments of the orient, near and far".