Alan Eaton Davidson (March 30, 1924 - December 2, 2003) was a British diplomat and historian best known for his books on food and gastronomy. He was the author of the 900-page, encyclopedic Oxford Companion to Food, which was published in 1999. March 30 is the 89th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (90th in Leap years). ... 1924 was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... December 2 is the 336th day (337th on leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2003 is a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

The son of a Scottish tax inspector, Davidson was born in Northern Ireland. He studied classical languages at Oxford. During World War II, he served in the Royal Navy. Scotland (Alba in Scottish Gaelic) is a country in northwest Europe, occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain. ... Northern Ireland is one of four constituent parts of the United Kingdom. ... The University of Oxford, located in the city of Oxford in England, is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. ... Mushroom cloud from the nuclear explosion over Nagasaki rising 18 km (over 11 miles) into the air. ... The Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the senior service of the armed services, being the oldest of its three branches. ...

In 1948, Davidson joined the Foreign Office and served diplomatic posts in Washington, Tunis, Brussels, Cairo, the Hague, and, from 1973 to 1975, ambassador to Laos. While living in Tunis, his wife asked him to look for a cookbook on fish because she did not recognize any of the local varieties. Not being able to find one he wrote one himself together with an Italian ichthyologist who happened to be visiting. The original manuscript was copied with a stencil machine. A copy of Seafish Of Tunisia And The Central Mediterranean reached the British cooking guru Elizabeth David, who passed it on to Penguin, which published it in 1972 as Mediterranean Seafood. The book has since become a standard reference work, and is characterized by its creative mixture of biology and recipes. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) is the United Kingdom abroad. ... ... Emblem of the Brussels-Capital Region Flag of The City of Brussels Brussels (Dutch: Brussel, French: Bruxelles, German: Brüssel) is the capital of Belgium and is considered by many to be the headquarters of the European Union, as two of its three main institutions have their headquarters in the... View of the modern citys skyline. ... Arms of The Hague The Hague (with capital T; Dutch: Den Haag, or officially s-Gravenhage) is the administrative capital of the Netherlands, located in the west of the country, in the province South Holland of which it is also the capital. ... Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fish. ...

This was followed by Seafood Of South East Asia (1979) and North Atlantic Seafood (1979) for which he travelled throughout the region, gathering thousands of recipes from Portugal to Iceland. He was a noted expert on Lao cuisine, which he introduced to the West through his two books, Traditional Recipes of Laos, and Fish and Fish Dishes of Laos. Lao cuisine is the cuisine of Laos. ...

External link

• Obituary (in The Guardian)