THE ALICE B. TOKLAS COOK BOOK by Alice B. Toklas | Review first published Nov. 21, 1954
About a group of recipes in this book of hers, Alice B. Toklas, the lifelong companion of Gertrude Stein, says, “…. Nor have they the distinction of being distinctive.” That phrase and others fully as distinctive certainly give the book distinction, but they are not its only charms.
In a chapter headed “Servants in France” we meet a dozen or so of the scores of femmes de ménages whom Miss Toklas enjoyed or suffered in the 45 years of her residence in that country, from the Hélène, who thought all Americans were dentists, to the Jeanne, who had to take days off, three at a time, to go shopping but never bought anything. Elsewhere we meet Picasso and Picabia. To Picasso, Miss Toklas served an original fish — bass poached in white wine and decorated with red mayonnaise, egg yolk and truffles. Picasso was enchanted by its beauty but thought it should have been in honor of Matisse. Later we learn how Virgil Thomson makes shad-roe mousse and how Cecil Beaton makes apple pudding; and we are told flatly, “This is the best way to cook frogs’ legs.”
Throughout the book are mentions of Gertrude Stein — Stein anecdotes, her pronouncements on food and cooking, her reactions to people and things. There are interesting wartime notes on the stratagems both ladies employed to keep their larder stocked during the Occupation in France, there’s a certainty of Allied victory — and, when that victory was a reality, some account of the delicacies they serve the American troops, including a truly mouthwatering recipe for “Liberation fruit cake.” There are also echoes of Steinism in Miss Toklas’s own book. In a chapter headed “Little-Known French Dishes Suitable for American and British Kitchens” a recipe for an omelet calls for four tablespoons of diced truffles and one for roast young turkey demands four cups of whole truffles. Suitable for American kitchens? Elsewhere, a recipe for turtle soup begins: “Soak ½ lb. of sun-dried turtle meat in cold water for four days, changing the water each day.”
Miss Toklas approves of “some man in the family” supervising or even cooking a dish because “this raises the standard of cooking in the home.” Living so long in France is, I suppose, an acceptable excuse for advice so flagrantly un-American, but doesn’t Miss Toklas want American housewives to buy her book?
They’ll miss something if they don’t. Whether or not you care for the cord of comment and episode on which Miss Toklas has strung her beads, the recipes, the beads themselves, have “the distinction of being distinctive.” It takes a lot of nerve to review a cookbook.
In a chapter headed “Murder in the Kitchen,” Miss Toklas says, “The only way to learn to cook is to cook”; and, similarly, the only way to judge a recipe is to try it. Of the more than 350 recipes in this book I had previously known and tried not more than a dozen or so exactly as given, and now I have tried two more — one for fried oysters (excellent) and one for sautéed squabs, which calls for onion juice, hot bouillon and a tablespoon of cognac (very fine). Then am I really qualified to review the book?
Well, who is? With any new cookbook that pretends to distinction, the test for reviewer cannot be whether a majority of the recipes are absolutely good, since they would take six months and several thousand dollars to find out, but whether they are good enough to try. This book passes that test with a high mark. I have listed 38 of its recipes for as early a trial as convenience will permit, and I’m pretty finicky. At least a third of the 350 are well worth sampling. — Rex Stout
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