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The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook first published 1954
This extract published in Penguin Books 2011
Copyright 1954 by the Estate of Alice B. Toklas
All rights reserved
Cover design based on a pattern for an eighteenth-century dish. Tin-glazed earthernware with blue paint. (Photograph copyright © Victora & Albert Museum.) Picture Research by Samantha Johnson. Lettering by Stephen Raw
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-196590-1
Dishes for Artists
Murder in the Kitchen
Food to which Aunt Pauline and Lady Godiva Led Us
Haschich Fudge
PENGUIN BOOKS — GREAT FOOD
Murder in the Kitchen
ALICE B. TOKLAS (1877–1967) was born in San Francisco, California. Long before Julia Child discovered French cooking, Toklas was sampling local dishes and collecting recipes in Paris between the wars. She was confidante, lover, cook, secretary, muse, editor and critic to the writer Gertrude Stein. Together they hosted a salon that attracted many influential writers and artists of the day, including Ernest Hemingway, Paul Bowles, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Picasso and Matisse. First published in 1954, The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook is a rich mixture of cookery, anecdote and reminiscence, evoking 1950s Paris and meals shared with famous friends. It is one of the bestselling cookbooks of all time.
Before coming to Paris I was interested in food but not in doing any cooking. When in 1908 I went to live with Gertrude Stein at the rue de Fleurus she said we would have American food for Sunday-evening supper, she had had enough French and Italian cooking; the servant would be out and I should have the kitchen to myself. So I commenced to cook the simple dishes I had eaten in the homes of the San Joaquin Valley in California – fricasseed chicken, corn bread, apple and lemon pie. Then when the pie crust received Gertrude Stein’s critical approval I made mince-meat and at Thanksgiving we had a turkey that Hélène the cook roasted but for which I prepared the dressing. Gertrude Stein not being able to decide whether she preferred mushrooms, chestnuts, or oysters in the dressing, all three were included. The experiment was successful and frequently repeated; it gradually entered into my repertoire, which expanded as I grew experimental and adventurous.
One day when Picasso was to lunch with us I decorated a fish in a way that I thought would amuse him. I chose a fine striped bass and cooked it according to a theory of my grandmother who had no experience in cooking and who rarely saw her kitchen but who had endless theories about cooking as well as about many other things. She contended that a fish having lived its life in water, once caught, should have no further contact with the element in which it had been born and raised. She recommended that it be roasted or poached in wine or cream or butter. So I made a court-bouillon of dry white wine with whole peppers, salt, a laurel leaf,* a sprig of thyme, a blade of mace, an onion with a clove stuck in it, a carrot, a leek, and a bouquet of fines herbes. This was gently boiled in the fish-kettle for ½ hour and then put aside to cool. Then the fish was placed on the rack, the fish-kettle covered and slowly brought to a boil, and the fish poached for 20 minutes. Taken from the fire it was left to cool in the court-bouillon. It was then carefully drained, dried, and placed on the fish platter. A short time before serving it I covered the fish with an ordinary mayonnaise and, using a pastry trube, decorated it with a red mayonnaise, not coloured with catsup – horror of horrors – but with tomato paste. Then I made a design with sieved hard-boiled eggs, the whites and the yolks apart, with truffles and with finely chopped fines herbes. I was proud of my chef d’œuvre when it was served and Picasso exclaimed at its beauty. But, said he, should it not rather have been made in honour of Matisse than of me.
Picasso was for many years on a strict diet; in fact he managed somehow to continue it through the World War and the Occupation and, characteristically, only relaxed after the Liberation. Red meat was proscribed but that presented no difficulties for in those days beef was rarely served by the French except the inevitable roast fillet of beef with sauce Madère. Chicken too was not well considered, though a roast leg of mutton was viewed with more favour. Or we would have a tender loin of veal preceded by a spinach soufflé, spinach having been highly recommended by Picasso’s doctor and a soufflé being the least objectionable way of preparing it. Could it not be made more interesting by adding a sauce. But what sauce would Picasso’s diet permit. I would give him a choice. The soufflé would be cooked in a well-buttered mould, placed in boiling water, and when sufficiently cooked turned into a hollow dish around which in equal divisions would be placed a Hollandaise sauce, a cream sauce, and a tomato sauce. It was my hope that the tri-coloured sauces would make the spinach soufflé look less nourishing. Cruel enigma, said Picasso, when the soufflé was served to him.
The only painter who ever gave me a recipe was Francis Picabia and though it is only a dish of eggs it merits the name of its creator.
Break 8 eggs into a bowl and mix them well with a fork, add salt but no pepper. Pour them into a saucepan – yes, a saucepan, no, not a frying pan. Put the saucepan over a very, very low flame, keep turning them with a fork while very slowly adding in very small quantities ½ lb. butter – not a speck less, rather more if you can bring yourself to it. It should take ½ hour to prepare this dish. The eggs of course are not scrambled but with the butter, no substitute admitted, produce a suave consistency that perhaps only gourments will appreciate.
When the Germans in 1940 were advancing we were at Bilignin and had no precise information concerning their progress through France. Could one believe the radio. We didn’t. We heard cannon-fire. Then it grew louder. The next morning dressing at the window I saw German planes firing on French planes, not more than two miles away. This decided me to act in the way any forethoughtful housekeeper should. We would take the car into Belley and make provision for any eventuality as I had done that April morning of 1906 when the fire in San Francisco had broken out after the earthquake. Then I had been able to secure two hams and my father had brought back four hundred cigarettes. With these one might, he said, not only exist but be able to be hospitable. So at Belley we bought two hams and hundreds of cigarettes and some groceries – the garden at Bilignin would provide fruit and vegetables. The main road was filled with refugees, just as it had been in 1914 and in 1917. Everything that was happening had already been experienced, like a half-awakening from nightmare. The firing grew louder and then the first armoured car flew past. Crushed, we took the little dust road back to Bilignin. The widow Roux, who for many summers had been our devoted servant and later during the Occupation proved to be our loyal friend, opened the big iron gates to let the car through and we unloaded the provisions. What were we to do with the two enormous uncooked hams. In what could we cook them and in what way so that they would keep indefinitely. We decided upon Eau-de-Vie de Marc for which the Bugey is well known. It seemed madly extravagant but we lived on those two hams during the long lean winter that followed and well into the following spring, and the Eau-de-Vie de Marc in which they were cooked, carefully bottled and corked, toned up winter vegetables. We threw nothing, but absolutely nothing away, living through a war in an occupied country.
The Baronne Pierlot, our neighbour, was châtelaine at Beon, some ten miles away. One day, before the war, we had driven over to a gouter* to which she had bidden us. It was being served in the summer dining-room whose windows and door gave on to a vast terrace. In the foreground was the marsh of the Rhône Valley lately reclaimed by the planting of Lombardy poplars, to the south the mountains of the Grande Chartreuse, to the left in the distance the French Alps, and over it all the Tiepolo blue sky. The table in the dining-room set for twenty or more was elaborately decorated with pink roses. Madame Pierlot’s observant eye passed quickly and lightly over each object on the table. I heard her tell the valet-de-chambre to ask the cook for the pièce de résistance and to place it in the empty space waiting for it in the centre of the table. But Marc did not leave the room, he merely took a cake from the serving table and put it in the empty space. There was evidently some contretemps. I was enlightened when I caught knowing looks passing between Gertrude Stein and one of the daughters-in-law of the house. It was Gertrude Stein’s white poodle, a very neat thief, who had done away with whatever had been in the centre of the table. Later when Madame Pierlot, to show that she had forgiven the dog, threw him a piece of cake we could not protest that it was against our principles to reward a misdeed.
her if she knew how to prepare several complicated dishes which she mentioned. She saw that Perrine had had a large experience. As she was well recommended, I decided, Madame Pierlot told me, to engage her, but I told her that it was on the condition that she would forget everything she knew and follow the recipes and the instructions I would give her.
Our enchanting old friend was as original in her housekeeping as in everything else. Long ago the Figaro which was then the newspaper read by the fashionable world asked well-known society women to contribute recipes which were to be printed in a special column. When Madame Pierlot was asked to be one of the contributors she sent the recipe for