The Atlantic

Martha Stewart Must Know Something We Don’t

Here’s what happened when we tried to re-create her Russian buffet.
Source: Clarkson Potter; The Atlantic

Sign up for Kaitlyn and Lizzie’s newsletter here.

A few months ago, my friend Stephanie found a copy of Martha Stewart’s 1982 book, ,on a stoop in Brooklyn and gave it to me at my birthday breakfast. This book is amazing. In it, Martha teaches how to plan a wide variety of food-focused parties, including “midnight omelette supper for thirty,” “neoclassic dinner for eight to ten,” and “sit-down country luncheon for one hundred seventy-five.” At the front, there’s a stunning photo of Martha wearing Adidas Superstars and feeding her chickens. The recipes are, I have to assume, of their time. There is one for “pureé of fennel,” and one for chicken paté served on apple slices. There is one for snow peas stuffed with Saint-André cheese (“guests cannot believe that someone has actually stuffed a snow pea!”) and one for a hollowed-out pumpkin full of asparagus, just to mention the second-most-surprising recipe involving snow peas and the second-most surprising recipe involving a hollowed-out pumpkin.

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic4 min readAmerican Government
How Democrats Could Disqualify Trump If the Supreme Court Doesn’t
Near the end of the Supreme Court’s oral arguments about whether Colorado could exclude former President Donald Trump from its ballot as an insurrectionist, the attorney representing voters from the state offered a warning to the justices—one evoking
The Atlantic3 min read
They Rode the Rails, Made Friends, and Fell Out of Love With America
The open road is the great American literary device. Whether the example is Jack Kerouac or Tracy Chapman, the national canon is full of travel tales that observe America’s idiosyncrasies and inequalities, its dark corners and lost wanderers, but ult
The Atlantic5 min readAmerican Government
What Nikki Haley Is Trying to Prove
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Nikki Haley faces terrible odds in her home state of

Related