The book has its origins in a series of articles Grigson wrote for "The Observer's" colour magazine in 1978, and is described as part cookery book and part social history. Her publisher wrote that she "re-read favourite novels, re-examined pictures in the great galleries, explored houses, letters, journals, and the cookery books used (or written) by her choice of famous men and women". Starting with "the great diarist and salad fancier" John Evelyn in the 17th century, she traces a chronological development of western cooking. Her other examples are from the 18th century (Parson James Woodforde), the cusp of the 18th and 19th (Jane Austen, Thomas Jefferson, and the Rev Sydney Smith), the high-19th (Lord and Lady Shaftesbury, Alexandre Dumas and Émile Zola); and on into the 20th "with Marcel Proust in the gourmet's Paris, and Claude Monet among the water-lilies at Giverny".