{"id":1838,"date":"2010-08-11T13:10:40","date_gmt":"2010-08-11T20:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/?p=1838"},"modified":"2011-11-16T09:42:08","modified_gmt":"2011-11-16T17:42:08","slug":"alice-just-keeps-cookin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/11\/alice-just-keeps-cookin\/","title":{"rendered":"Alice just keeps cookin'…"},"content":{"rendered":"

The newest edition of THE ALICE B. TOKLAS COOK BOOK<\/strong> (Harper Perennial, 2010) came out yesterday published by the paperback division of its original 1954 \u00a0publisher then called Harper & Sons. (The title of the book maintains the original spelling of “cookbook” as two words.) \u00a0This book is a reprint of the original, but \u00a0includes a foreword written by food writer M.F.K. Fisher for the thirtieth anniversary edition. \u00a0Fisher regrets that she never met Alice, though she had several chances while living in Paris.<\/p>\n

By the end of the first week that this edition was released, it was within the top fifty French cookbooks on amazon.com. \u00a0Not bad!<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The continuing popularity of the cookbook is largely due to the \u00a0“Haschish Fudge” recipe, page 259 of the latest edition, which though really more of a spicy, nut candy than a fudge, morphed into \u00a0“Alice B. Toklas Brownies” in the 1960s. \u00a0(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.<\/p>\n

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The latest edition with a cover blurb by friend Janet Flanner.<\/p><\/div>\n

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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: \u201cIllness sets the mind free sometimes to roam and surmise.\u201d<\/p>\n

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A demure Alice (copyright David Levine)<\/p><\/div>\n

Friends had long urged her to write a book about her life with Gertrude.\u00a0 Her usual response was that Gertrude had said all that there was to say.\u00a0 Ultimately she agreed to write a book, largely because she needed the money. \u00a0The 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.<\/p>\n

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The 1st editions: U.S. on the left, British on the right, both with Sir Francis Rose illustrations.<\/p><\/div>\n

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 \u00a0titled “Recipes from Friends.” Composer Virgil Thomson \u00a0submitted a recipe for shad-roe mousse, designer Pierre Balmain sent his recipe for “Vent Vert” chicken, while salonista \u00a0Natalie Barney submitted a simple, four ingredient recipe for stuffed eggplant with sugar.<\/p>\n

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Norwegian edition, 2007<\/p><\/div>\n

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. \u00a0The haschish fudge recipe came from artist Brion Gysin and there has always been conjecture as to whether Alice initially realized that its key ingredient,\u00a0canibus sativa, <\/em>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.)<\/p>\n

The cookbook, a blending of reminiscences and recipes, became a best-seller. \u00a0Some 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!<\/p>\n

Alice\u2019s 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.\u00a0 She has been acknowledged as both a forerunner of contemporary food-writing and the celebrity-chef movement of the last 40 years.<\/p>\n

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Japanese edition, 1998<\/p><\/div>\n

A few years ago I wrote a letter to the editor of GOURMET<\/strong> magazine, Ruth Reichl, in response to an article relating to Alice’s cookbook. \u00a0In it I mentioned Alice’s most famous recipe and was quickly reprimanded by Ms. Reichl:<\/p>\n

“…I think you do Ms. Toklas a disservice when you say she’s remembered largely for that brownie recipe.\u00a0 In food circles she is widely revered not only for her recipes, which are wonderful, but also for\u00a0her unique recipe writing style.”<\/em><\/p>\n

(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<\/strong>.)<\/p>\n

Following the success of the cookbook, Alice was asked by HOUSE BEAUTIFUL<\/strong> magazine to write a series of articles. \u00a0Some of these served as the basis for a second cookbook in 1958, AROMAS AND FLAVORS PAST AND PRESENT<\/strong>. \u00a0Alice was not happy with that book as the editor of the magazine, Poppy Cannon, author of \u00a0THE CAN OPENER COOKBOOK <\/strong>(1955),<\/strong> 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. \u00a0The second book did not sell well.<\/p>\n

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. \u00a0If you don’t have a copy, get this latest edition and once you’ve read it, pick a recipe and invite over some friends. \u00a0In 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!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u00a0publisher then called Harper & Sons. (The title of the book maintains the original spelling of “cookbook” as two words.) \u00a0This book is a reprint of the original, but \u00a0includes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[15,37,69,89,140,178,188,194,207],"class_list":["post-1838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historic-facts","tag-alice-b-toklas","tag-brion-gysin","tag-ernst-reichl","tag-gertrude-stein","tag-m-f-k-fisher","tag-poppy-cannonn","tag-ruth-reichl","tag-sir-francis-rose","tag-the-alice-b-toklas-cookbook"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1838"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3449,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1838\/revisions\/3449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gertrudeandalice.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}