In the mid-20th century she strongly influenced the revitalisation of home cookery in her native country and beyond with articles and books about European cuisines and traditional British dishes.

[12] David states that French Provincial Cooking incorporated numerous articles she had written for Vogue and The Sunday Times in the 1950s.

[13] It has been described as "her most influential book", offering in Joe Moran's words a "stylish but straightforward cuisine [which] fitted in with a new type of casual urban entertaining", suitable for having "a few friends round for a meal" as opposed to an old-fashioned dinner party.

[14] In 1953, the American Cordon Bleu cook Julia Child visited Marseille and was like David impressed by the freshness of the produce from vegetables to fish, so unlike America's chilled and wrapped supermarket goods.

The culinary historian Rosemary Lancaster writes that while Child's book describes how to prepare the food plainly and directly, without David's discourses on the ambience of the cuisine, both women "seduced their readers", changing cooking habits in their home countries.