Black Sea, by Caroline Eden

Caroline Eden’s Black Sea: Dispatches and Recipes, Through Darkness and Light (2018) describes a tour of part of the regions bordering the Black Sea, including Romania.  The book combines an account of her travels with historical background and discussions of food, interspersed with recipes. She gets to Constanța after an exhausting 17-hour bus journey from Odessa, arriving just in time for Romania’s Navy Day celebrations (15 August), and she gives a colourful description of the festive atmosphere.

 Strolling around, she looks at the port city’s buildings, including of course the Casino, ‘a strong contender for the finest wasted building in the world,’ as she puts it.  A historical interlude describes the meeting in Constanța of King Carol I and Tsar Nicholas II on 14 July 1914, part of which took place in the Casino, and not forgetting to include details of what they ate, a menu heavily influenced by French cuisine.  There follow eight recipes representative of Romanian cooking.

 Unfortunately, Eden’s heart does not seem to be in Romania.  Its chapter is the shortest in the book, she spends a greater number of pages on the recipes than on the place, and she devotes more space than is necessary to the proprietor of the guesthouse she stays in and a chap from whom she buys an intricately carved wooden spoon.  She writes about other outsiders who wrote about Romania and its food – Sacheverell Sitwell, Patrick Leigh Fermor and William Blacker – though not specifically the Black Sea coast.  As a result, there is not much to be learned about this part of Romania from her brief stay, and soon she is off, with bigger fish to fry elsewhere.