Starred Review. Translated into English for the first time since its original 1927 publication,
La Bonne Cuisine has long been the French housewife's equivalent of
The Fannie Farmer Cookbook or
The Joy of Cooking—a trusted and comprehensive guide to "la cuisine bourgeoise" or home cooking, rather than the haute cuisine of chefs and Escoffier. Julia Child called
LBC "one of my bibles" and drew heavily upon its detailed approach to preparation as she labored on her own classic
Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Aratow has retained the book's exhaustive scope and delightfully imperious Gallic tone ("The only true roast is a roast cooked on a spit"). The result is a comprehensive if old-fashioned tome that is an excellent basic guide to techniques, equipment and every staple of the French repertoire, from Sauce Velouté and Fricassée de Poulet to Crème Caramel. Francophiles and food history buffs will thrill to see the legendary book in its entirety, complete with original illustrations, though few modern cooks still need guidelines for lighting the firebox of a cast-iron coal-fired stove or plucking and flaming a fresh-killed chicken. A more detailed apparatus of notes on modernization would've made the book more user-friendly. As it stands, this magisterial translation offers a window into a bygone moment in French life and is a testament to the enduring joy of cooking with cookbooks.
(Dec.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Reviews:“[A] book that I adore and that was my mentor in my early days in France. . . . It was a carefully thought-out, very personal book, and one had complete confidence in what she had to say. . . . I still love it.”
—Julia Child (Simple Cooking, “Reminisces,” 1989)
“It would be difficult to overestimate the service rendered to monolingual English and American cooks by the translation of this massive, instructive, and, in its way, very funny book.”
—Gourmet
“This warhorse of French cookery . . . is a proudly hidebound volume on the (Thoroughly French) Right Way to Cook. . . . The book reads like The Joy of Cooking for the dominatrix set. Still, it's hard not to love a writer with such dramatic flair.”
—Bon Appetit
“If you want to add one new definitive cookbook to your larder, we suggest the English edition of LA BONNE CUISINE. . . . This is the tome that got Julia Child cooking as a postwar bride in Paris.”
—Los Angeles Magazine
“[T]his magisterial translation offers a window into a bygone moment in French life and is a testament to the enduring joy of cooking with cookbooks.”
—Publishers Weekly Starred Review
“The gift for the serious cookbook lover who has everything. . . . [T]he go-to manual of the French home kitchen.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“[A] tidy how-to treatise on traditional (and ambitious) home cooking by a working mother in Paris in the first half of the 20th century.”
—New York Times Magazine
“[A] fascinating work, at once an encyclopedia of the basic techniques o cooking and a snapshot of French cuisine as it existed in the early 20th century.”
—Los Angeles Times
“[A]n important book for both food lovers and cooks, with fine explanations of exactly how to prepare the classic French dishes we Americans already love (and a few not yet discovered).”
—Traditional Home
“A lasting feast for your foodie friends.”
—Budget Living
“One of the most detailed, interesting, well-written, and technically proficient books for the French home cook. . . . I learned one hundred times more from it than I did from Escoffier and other great chefs.”
—Madeleine Kamman
“Julia Child . . . had been much influenced by Mme. Saint-Ange, who in the 1920s wrote step-by-step instructions that guided French women through the intricacies, and also the simplicities, of cuisine bourgeoise.”
—Corby Kummer, The Atlantic
“Finally, this great book has been translated. My French edition has lost its cover from thirty years of almost constant use. LA BONNE CUISINE DE MADAME E. SAINT-ANGE is filled with good sense, logic, and boundless information about the world's best home cooking, and it is deeply grounded in the traditions and techniques that define a great cuisine. It's not just a book of recipes, but helps us master a subtle and immensely satisfying art.”
—James Peterson, author of Sauces
“LA BONNE CUISINE DE MADAME E. SAINT-ANGE is the first French blockbuster written by a woman cook, and it remains my favorite. Saint-Ange has a turn of phrase and a depth of culinary knowledge that have rarely been equaled. At first glance her book appears inordinately long, but she carries us without faltering. Some recipes may take a couple pages of dense print to explain, but at the end you know you will emerge triumphant, with perfection on the plate.”
—Anne Willan, founder of École de Cuisine La Varenne
“Among its many treasures, this marvelous book offers as clear a picture as we can ever hope to get of the workings of the French home kitchen at a time when the meals that came from it were justly the pride of France. The supernaturally knowledgeable Madame Saint- Ange was to her country what Fannie Farmer was to America, but she had the better tools and the better cuisine to work with, and she possessed a forthright Gallic charm entirely her own. For decades, the absence of this book in English translation has been a culinary embarrassment. Paul Aratow has now decisively changed all that, for which he has my endless thanks.”
—John Thorne, author of Simple Cooking and Pot on the Fire
“With his masterful translation of LA BONNE CUISINE DE MADAME E. SAINT-ANGE, Paul Aratow has done a great service to lovers of food, food lorists, and curious cooks everywhere. It's a Joy of Cooking and a Mastering the Art of French Cooking stitched together with dishes from the French family home—all wrapped into one comprehensive volume that will entice and intrigue anyone interested in one of the major foundations of our new American cooking.”
—Victoria Wise, former chef of Chez Panisse
“The classic cooking of Madame Saint-Ange—so fresh and so French—lives on as testament to a true passion for bonne cuisine and a wonderful lesson in echnique.”
—Daniel Boulud, chef of Daniel
“This book will fascinate students of French gastronomy and those with a particular interest in the mores of middle-class French households in the early part of the twentieth century. As a window into French cookery, it is an extraordinary work.When read alongside Escoffier, whilst the scope is very similar, Madame Saint-Ange includes far more explanatory information, and although the tone is formal, it is also meticulous and often illuminating.”
—Stephanie Alexander, author of The Cook's Companion
“Styles of cuisine may change, but the fundamentals are forever. There is more commonsense basic cooking instruction in this book than in most libraries.”
—Russ Parsons, Los Angeles Times food columnist and author of How to Read a French Fry
