Questions and Answers

The newest edition of THE ALICE B. TOKLAS COOK BOOK (Harper Perennial, 2010) came out yesterday published by the paperback division of its original 1954  publisher then called Harper & Sons. (The title of the book maintains the original spelling of “cookbook” as two words.)  This book is a reprint of the original, but  includes a foreword written by food writer M.F.K. Fisher for the thirtieth anniversary edition.  Fisher regrets that she never met Alice, though she had several chances while living in Paris.

By the end of the first week that this edition was released, it was within the top fifty French cookbooks on amazon.com.  Not bad!

In the fifty six years since it first came out, the cookbook has only been out of print for a very short time and has been widely translated, most recently into Norwegian and became a bestseller in Scandinavia.

The continuing popularity of the cookbook is largely due to the  “Haschish Fudge” recipe, page 259 of the latest edition, which though really more of a spicy, nut candy than a fudge, morphed into  “Alice B. Toklas Brownies” in the 1960s.  (See Ruth Reichl note below.) The cookbook is, however, more than just this notorious recipe, and the story of how it came about and has endured all of these years is in itself blogworthy.

The writing of the cookbook was a struggle for Alice. She suffered a bout of jaundice during the writing of part of the book which she mentions in the foreword adding in typical Toklas style: “Illness sets the mind free sometimes to roam and surmise.”

Friends had long urged her to write a book about her life with Gertrude.  Her usual response was that Gertrude had said all that there was to say.  Ultimately she agreed to write a book, largely because she needed the money.  The publisher had stipulated that she was to send them a certain number of pages, but as the book’s deadline neared, Alice realized that she may not be able to meet the publisher’s demand though she had been collecting recipes ever since she was a young woman in San Francisco.

She quickly wrote letters to her friends asking them to send her their favorite recipes. The responses were tremendous resulting in the 35 page chapter  titled “Recipes from Friends.” Composer Virgil Thomson  submitted a recipe for shad-roe mousse, designer Pierre Balmain sent his recipe for “Vent Vert” chicken, while salonista  Natalie Barney submitted a simple, four ingredient recipe for stuffed eggplant with sugar.

Other recipes were provided by Cecil Beaton, Carl Van Vechten and his wife and Sir Francis Rose, the artist who illustrated the book’s first edition.  The haschish fudge recipe came from artist Brion Gysin and there has always been conjecture as to whether Alice initially realized that its key ingredient, canibus sativa, would cause such an uproar. The U.S. publisher certainly didn’t want to take a chance with government authorities and left the recipe out of the first U.S. edition, while the British publisher included it. (All editions after 1960 include the recipe.)

The cookbook, a blending of reminiscences and recipes, became a best-seller.  Some of the reviewers of the book implied that Gertrude Stein’s writing style may have come about because of teatime snacks of the energized fudge!

Alice’s love of food, her love of entertaining and cooking, her love of humor and gossip, and her love of Gertrude Stein all come through in her book.  She has been acknowledged as both a forerunner of contemporary food-writing and the celebrity-chef movement of the last 40 years.

A few years ago I wrote a letter to the editor of GOURMET magazine, Ruth Reichl, in response to an article relating to Alice’s cookbook.  In it I mentioned Alice’s most famous recipe and was quickly reprimanded by Ms. Reichl:

“…I think you do Ms. Toklas a disservice when you say she’s remembered largely for that brownie recipe.  In food circles she is widely revered not only for her recipes, which are wonderful, but also for her unique recipe writing style.”

(As a footnote to my Reichl encounter, several years ago I realized that her father, Ernst Reichl, was a book designer who designed a number of Gertrude’s books and Alice’s 1964 memoir, WHAT IS REMEMBERED.)

Following the success of the cookbook, Alice was asked by HOUSE BEAUTIFUL magazine to write a series of articles.  Some of these served as the basis for a second cookbook in 1958, AROMAS AND FLAVORS PAST AND PRESENT.  Alice was not happy with that book as the editor of the magazine, Poppy Cannon, author of  THE CAN OPENER COOKBOOK (1955), had modernized and simplified many of the recipes. (Hard to imagine Alice using canned anything!) The second book also does not contain stories about her life, an integral part of the first cookbook.  The second book did not sell well.

As we celebrate this new edition, if you have a copy of the cookbook, take it off the bookshelf or from its nook in the kitchen and find a recipe to cook this week.  If you don’t have a copy, get this latest edition and once you’ve read it, pick a recipe and invite over some friends.  In either case, if you chose the recipe “(which anyone can whip up on a rainy day),” I can assure you that a good time will be had by all!

Tagged Alice B. Toklas, Brion Gysin, Ernst Reichl, Gertrude Stein, M.F.K. Fisher, Poppy Cannonn, Ruth Reichl, Sir Francis Rose, The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook