Jill Norman is a British editor and food writer. She published authors such as

Elizabeth David Elizabeth David ( Gwynne, 26 December 1913 – 22 May 1992) was a British cookery writer. In the mid-20th century she strongly influenced the revitalisation of home cookery in her native country and beyond with articles and books about Europea ...

for

Penguin Books Penguin Books Limited is a Germany, German-owned English publishing, publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers the Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the ...

and then started writing books about food herself. In 2001 she published the 564-page ''New Penguin Cookery Book''.

Early life

Jill Norman grew up in the Midlands region of England. Her father owned a large market garden and vegetable shops, so from an early age she ate well.

Education

She studied French and Spanish at King's College in London.

Herbs and Spices

She is acknowledged internationally as an authority on herbs and spices.

Publishing Career

After university, she joined Penguin Books as an editor. One of her responsibilities was to expand the list of food and wine books. In the 60s and 70s, there were few cheap cookery books on the market, and so the list took off with authors who became household names like

Jane Grigson Jane Grigson (born Heather Mabel Jane McIntire; 13 March 1928 – 12 March 1990) was an English cookery writer. In the latter part of the 20th century she was the author of the food column for ''The Observer'' and wrote numerous books about Eu ...

Claudia Roden Claudia Roden (née Douek; born 1936) is an Egyptian-born British cookbook writer and cultural anthropologist of Sephardi/ Mizrahi descent. She is best known as the author of Middle Eastern cookbooks including ''A Book of Middle Eastern Food'' ...

and Alan Davidson. There was no test kitchen at Penguin Books so Jill Norman used to test out any recipes in the books she was working on which she thought sounded interesting or 'rather dodgy'. Through the testing she says that her family ate food from all over the world and she became a 'reasonable' cook. By the time she left Penguin, she was responsible not only for food and drink but also social sciences, education and more.

Elizabeth David

Jill's first meeting with Elizabeth David was about a new cover for a book. They saw each other frequently for work and became friends. After Elizabeth David's death in 1992, as the literary executor of Elizabeth David's work, Jill Norman found a box with articles, recipes and notes about Christmas. Elizabeth David had intended to publish them as a book. Jill Norman put the material together as Elizabeth had intended in a book about Christmas that was published in Jill finished editing Elizabeth David's last book, ''Harvest of the Cold Months'', a book about the Social History of Ice and Ices, after David's death. It was made up of two anthologies and unpublished work.

Awards

The Glenfiddich award 1986 for Sainsbury's Classic Cookbooks. The André Simon award, the Glenfiddich award, and the IACP award for a reference book in 1990 for The Complete Book of Spices. In 1994 André Simon Award for Elisabeth David's Harvest of the Cold Months: The Social History of Ice and Ices, which Jill Norman had edited. In 2014 The

Guild of Food Writers The Guild of Food Writers (GFW) is a professional association of food writers and broadcasters in the United Kingdom. It has around 600 authors, broadcasters, columnists and journalists among its members. In 2022 Delia Smith was presented with ...

gave Jill Norman its Lifetime Achievement Award. Winner 2006 James Beard Foundation Award for The Cook's Book (DK Publishing)

References

External links

Guild of Food Writers
official site. * https://jillnorman.com Jill Norman's official website Living people British food writers James Beard Foundation Award winners Year of birth missing (living people) {{food-bio-stub