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The omelettes of Madame Poulard at Mont-Saint-Michel were famous, and visitors speculated endlessly about the hidden trick behind them. When asked, she replied in a letter that she broke good eggs into a bowl, beat them well, put a good piece of butter in the pan, threw in the eggs and shook the pan constantly. The mystique was projected onto her by admirers; the result came from sound ingredients and plain technique done with attention.
In Bruscandoli, David first meets a seasonal risotto in Venetian restaurants and then goes to the Rialto market to find the wild shoots it is made from. Restaurant and market together lead her to the local, seasonal ingredient behind the dish.
The writer Norman Douglas, whom David knew as a young woman on the Riviera and in Italy, taught her to search out the best local ingredients and to refuse anything second-rate or faked. He treated food, place and conversation as one continuous way of living. He also gave her a working rule: do as you please and ignore conventional disapproval. She credited him with shaping both her independence and her standards of taste.