The Happy Table of Eugene Walter: Southern Spirits in Food and Drink

By Eugene Walter

A southern Renaissance man, Eugene Walter (1921-1998) was a pioneering food writer, a champion of southern foodways and culture, and a legendary personality among food lovers. The Happy Table of Eugene Walter, which introduces a new generation of readers to Walter's culinary legacy, is a revelation to anyone interested in today's booming scene in vintage and artisanal drinks--from bourbon and juleps to champagne and punch--and a southern twist on America's culinary heritage.

Assembled and edited by Walter's literary executor, Donald Goodman, and food writer Thomas Head, this charming cookbook includes more than 300 recipes featuring the use of spirits in the food and drink of the South, as well as numerous asides, lovely short essays, and countless witticisms that make for great reading as well as good cooking. A wellspring of southern eating and drinking traditions lovingly collected by Walter over the years, the volume is also a celebration of Walter himself and his incomparable appetite and talent for life and its surprising pleasures. The Happy Table showcases Walter's remarkably contemporary gustatory sensibilities and the humorous and quirky yet incisive voice for which he has long been embraced.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Release date: Oct 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9780807869253

Eugene Walter

Eugene Walter (1921-98), a native of Mobile, Alabama, and author of the classic American Cooking: Southern Style, was a pioneering food writer and editor who enjoyed long sojourns in New York, Rome, and Paris when he wasn't at home in the South. A translator, screenwriter, novelist, puppeteer, artist, costume designer, actor, and more, Walter was a man of arts, letters, and food. The Happy Table of Eugene Walter, a cookbook that Walter was working on in the final years of his life, is the first new book by Walter to appear in more than a decade.

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