The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book

By Alice B. Toklas, M.F.K. Fisher and Ruth Reichl

A beautiful new edition of the classic culinary memoir from the famous American ex-pat with a new introduction by chef & food writer Ruth Reichl.

At their home in Paris, Alice B. Toklas and her romantic partner, Gertrude Stein, entertained a circle of friends who would become the twentieth century’s most revered cultural luminaries—writers, artists, and expats, including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thornton Wilder, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso. When the legendary Alice was asked to write a memoir, she initially refused. Instead, she wrote The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book, a celebration of a lifetime in pursuit of culinary delights.

This sharply written, deliciously rich compendium combines recipes for traditional French dishes such as coq au vin, bouillabaisse, and boeuf bourguignon with amusing tales from Alice’s life and travels to rural France, Spain, and America. In “Murder in the Kitchen,” Alice describes the first carp she killed, after which she immediately lit up a cigarette and waited for the police to come and haul her away. “Dishes for Artists” describes her hunt for the perfect recipe to fit Picasso’s peculiar diet. “Recipes from Friends” highlights her infamous “Haschich Fudge,” which she notes may often be accompanied by “ecstatic reveries and extensions of one’s personality on several simultaneous planes.”

With delightful line drawings, a foreword by M. F. K. Fisher, and a new introduction by culinary doyenne Ruth Reichl, The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book brilliantly captures the spirit of a unique woman and the remarkable time in which she lived.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9780063050891

Alice B. Toklas

Alice B. Toklas was Gertrude Stein's ""secretary-companion."" For many years they lived together in France, Toklas cooking while Stein was writing. She is memorialized in Stein's most famous book, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.

Book preview

I.

The French Tradition

THE FRENCH APPROACH TO FOOD IS CHARACTERISTIC; THEY BRING TO their consideration of the table the same appreciation, respect, intelligence and lively interest that they have for the other arts, for painting, for literature and for the theatre. By French I mean French men as well as French women, for the men in France play a very active part in everything that pertains to the kitchen. I have heard working men in Paris discuss the way their wives prepare a beef stew as it is cooked in Burgundy or the way a cabbage is cooked with salt pork and browned in the oven. A woman in the country can be known for kilometres about for the manner in which she prepares those sublimated dumplings known as Quenelles, and a very complicated dish they are. Conversation even in a literary or political salon can turn to the subject of menus, food or wine.

The French like to say that their food stems from their culture and that it has developed over the centuries. It has its universal reputation for these reasons and on account of the mild climate and fertile soil.

We foreigners living in France respect and appreciate this point of view but deplore their too strict observance of a tradition which will not admit the slightest deviation in a seasoning or the suppression of a single ingredient. For example, a dish as simple as a potato salad must be served surrounded by chicory. To serve it with any other green is inconceivable. Still, this strict conservative attitude over the years has resulted in a number of essential principles that have made the renown of the French kitchen.

French markets without deep freezing are limited to seasonal produce which is however of excellent quality with the exception of beef, milk and a few fruits. Even the common root vegetables, carrots, turnips, parsnips and leeks (the asparagus of the poor), are tender and savoury, olive oil and butter are abundant and of a high grade and bread is nourishing and delicious.

Wars change the way of life, habits, markets and so eventually cooking. For five years and more the French were deprived of most of their foodstuffs and were obliged to use inferior substitutes when they could be found. After the Liberation the markets very slowly were supplied with a limited amount of material. The population had been hungry too long, they had lost their old disciplined appreciation of food and had forgotten or were ignoring their former critical judgment. So that even now French food has not yet returned to its old standard.

The crowded continent of Europe on which wars are fought inevitably suffers more privations than we do. Restrictions aroused our American ingenuity, we found combinations and replacements which pointed in new directions and created a fresh and absorbing interest in everything pertaining to the kitchen.

The French are indifferent to these new discoveries of ours, to the exact science that American cooking has become, to our time- and labour-saving devices. Nor do they like the food that issues from our modern kitchens. They say that it is either too imaginative or too exotic. One may say of the French what was said of their Bourbon kings: they learn nothing, they forget nothing. Since the war we Americans have learned a great deal from various sources and as teaching is natural to us we would like to share our knowledge.

French cooking for the use of American or British women is not hedged around with as many difficulties as most of them suppose. If they permit themselves to indulge in national prejudices they should admit the same privilege for the French. For example the French use butter, and of an excellent quality, for nearly all their cooking, not only because it gives a flavour that no substitute does but because it marries as they say, that is it amalgamates all the flavours of the dish to be prepared as well as thickening the sauce. Which brings us at once to a fundamental difference between French and American cooking. The famous five basic sauces do not prevent French cooking from being dry whilst American cooking is moist though devoid of sauces. The French drink wine with their lunch as well as with their dinner. Americans drink little wine if any with their meals but there are at least a dozen beverages from which they can choose an accompaniment to their food if they want to. Four of the five basic French sauces are certainly unknown even by name to half the population of France. Almost any Frenchwoman can prepare a white sauce, frequently and erroneously called by Americans a cream sauce. The French being realists look facts in the face and only call a sauce a cream sauce when it is made with cream. Some French sauces have a small amount of cream in them but that does not make them a cream sauce. The French never add Tabasco, ketchup or Worcestershire sauce, nor do they eat any of the innumerable kinds of pickles, nor do they accompany a meat course with radishes, olives or salted nuts. Respect for the inherent quality and flavour of each ingredient is typical of the French attitude to food and it gives a delicacy and poignancy to their cooking. Their discreet use of herbs is to be remarked. This restraint, le juste milieu they call it, the golden mean, is what makes them not only good cooks but good critics of food.

French cooking is founded upon the discoveries made in the seventeenth century when suddenly everyone who could afford it became interested in food as a fine art. It was a century of advancement in the art of living and the art of cooking was greatly refined and widened. Expressing its time as any original endeavour must do, French cooking underwent the influences of the lavish eighteenth century and the extravagances of the nineteenth century. The first half of the twentieth century has been too disturbed by two major wars to have yet declared itself.

To cook as the French do one must respect the quality and flavour of the ingredients. Exaggeration is not admissible. Flavours are not all amalgamative. These qualities are not purchasable but may be cultivated. The haute cuisine has arrived at the enviable state of reacting instinctively to these known principles.

What is sauce for the goose may be sauce for the gander but is not necessarily sauce for the chicken, the duck, the turkey or the guinea hen.

BOEUF BOURGUIGNON (1)

(Beef Stew as cooked in Burgundy)

2 lbs. of shoulder of beef without bones cut in squares of about 2 1/2 inches.

3 tablespoons lard.

3 1/2 ozs. salt pork cut in small squares.

12 small onions.

1 tablespoon flour.

2 cups old dry Burgundy red wine.

1 clove garlic, a bouquet tied together of about 2 inches orange peel, a bay leaf, a small sprig of thyme, a sliver of nutmeg. Salt, no pepper.

Melt the lard in a Dutch oven; when it smokes brown the salt pork and remove, brown the onions and remove. Then place the pieces of meat side by side and brown on all sides. Add the salt pork and flour, stirring with a wooden spoon. Add the wine well heated, stir well. Add the clove of garlic, the orange peel and the bouquet. Cover hermetically and cook over low flame for 3 1/2 hours. If the wine and juice have evaporated add a very small quantity of boiling water at a time. Add onions and cook for 15 minutes longer. Remove bouquet. Place meat and gravy on serving dish, sprinkle chopped parsley over top.*

Another version of this admirable dish will be found in Chapter IX.

QUENELLES

(a short cut)

1 1/2 cups concentrated chicken broth.

1/2 cup butter.

1 1/2 cups sifted flour.

Salt, pepper, a pinch of nutmeg.

Yolks of 5 eggs.

Bring the concentrated chicken broth and butter to a boil in a saucepan. As soon as it comes to a boil remove from the heat and at once put into the saucepan as quickly as possible the sifted flour. With a wooden spoon working rapidly stir until it is perfectly smooth. Then place on a very low flame continuing to stir vigorously until the paste leaves the sides and bottom of the pan clean and small beads appear upon the surface. Remove from heat and cool for about 10 minutes. Then add the yolks of eggs, one at a time, beating each one with a high stroke that allows as much air as possible to enter. This should take about 20 minutes. Cover and put aside in a cool place, but not in the refrigerator, for 2 or 3 hours. Half an hour before time to serve put a large saucepan of water to boil. On a well-floured table take small pieces of dough and roll into finger lengths and gently drop into the boiling water. Reduce the heat—they should poach not boil. When they rise to the surface and turn over remove pan from the flame and cover. This will cause them to swell. A few minutes will suffice for this. Remove gently with a flat perforated spoon. Serve in a cream sauce or in a mushroom sauce or a combination of both or surrounding fricasseed chicken or with a veal

Reviews for The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book

[cacuzza · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I appreciate the comments on French food ways as much as the insight into the domestic arrangements, life under the Occupation, and later.

[southshoreann · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book. The history, the food, the stories.

[experimentalis_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

not practically useful, but very funny

[mcglothlen · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a middling cookbook but a wonderful BOOK. So I split the difference with the star-rating.