In the introduction to Evelyn's chapter, Grigson describes his contribution to British food—translating the works of Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie, promoting ice-houses and recording the earliest example of the pressure cooker. She quotes him on vegetables, for instance on beetroot: "vulgar, but eaten with oil and vinegar, as usually, it is no despicable salad." Evelyn's garden was organised so that mixed green salad could be put on the table every day of the year; Grigson lists the 35 different species from balm to tripe-madam that Evelyn specified for his salads. For the chapters on the novelists, Grigson gives recipes for dishes mentioned in their books, including white soup and fricassée of sweetbread for Jane Austen, asparagus soup "à la comtesse," and fillets of sole with ravigote sauce for Zola, brill Radziwill and boeuf à la mode for Proust, and for Dumas, who published a book about food, she prints his own recipes for cabbage soup, scrambled eggs with shrimps, and several others.