Customer Reviews

Clementine in the Kitchen (Modern Library Food)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
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Eloquently written with wit and humor, and peppered with recipes, I was wrapped in epicurian delight as I followed the expatriate Beck family from their idyllic home in pre-World War II France back to the States. Clementine, the family's Cordon Blue chef extraordinaire, introduces the Becks to the joys and adventures of French cuisine. Subsequently returning with them to New England, the indomitable Clementine continues to captivate as she navigates the highs and lows of American gastronomy. As one who reads at least six good meals a day, I consider this book to be one of the very best.

This delightful part-memoir, part-cookbook is a poignant tale of times past, probably never to be recaptured. The author and family lived for a decade in France where they enjoyed the services of their excellent cook, Clementine. When war clouds broke over Europe, they were somehow able to convince this estimable lady to cross the ocean with them and settle in Marblehead Massachusetts.

Clementine braved the culture shocks of 1940 USA very well to hear Mr. Chamberlain tell it. The mighty American supermarkets, the excesses of packaging, and the difficulties of a one-language nation left her unfazed and French to the core. Unfortunately for her, the one language was not French. I suspect Clementine was not as innocent and circumspect as the author believed, and I am sure at times was very lonely.

The occasional recipes in the memoir section of the book can be daunting to the American cook who is used to exact measures. Mr. Chamberlain rather grumpily hints we should use our imagination. I think I can handle "butter the size of an egg," but confess "a handful of flour" makes me uneasy. The recipes are not exceedingly difficult, though many are painstaking, and all will make a cholesterol counter wince. The recipe for Coquille St. Jacques (scallops) is a marvel of simplicity and excellence. The latter half of the book contains recipes with measurements translated by Mr. Chamberlain's wife and daughter. Somehow, these lack the charm of Clementine's unexpurgated notes.

The book is lavishly illustrated with the author's charcoal and line drawings expertly done. This is a fun book to own for anyone with a taste for provincial French cooking and warm-hearted memoirs.

Imagine contemporary food/wine lover and author Peter Mayle (A YEAR IN PROVENCE, FRENCH LESSONS) stumbling upon, and subsequently hiring, a fabulous French cook, then writing a book about the experience. This will give you some idea of the flavor of CLEMENTINE IN THE KITCHEN, written by Samuel Chamberlain (under the nom de plume Phineas Beck), and first published in 1943.

The Chamberlains - Samuel, wife, son, and daughter - were residents in the French town of Senlis for several years immediately before the outbreak of World War II. Samuel was an American businessman representing a U.S. company. After enduring five successive unsatisfactory cooks, the family discovered Clementine, a miracle worker in the kitchen. Then, brought back to the States by his company in 1939 because of gathering war clouds, Samuel offers to take the unattached Clementine to the Chamberlains' new home in Marblehead, MA. In addition to being about French food and the preparation of it, CLEMENTINE IN THE KITCHEN is a charming narrative of the lady's introduction to things distinctly un-French, including such wonders as the American outdoor barbecue ceremony, supermarkets, hot dogs, whole hams (unknown back home except by the very rich), frozen foods, canned clam juice, breakfast cereals, Coon cheese, and blueberries.

A few eternal truths were apparent even 60+ years ago. Two examples:

"Sliced American bread in cellophane puzzled Clementine. Those even white slices might be fine for sandwiches of ham and cheese sauteed in butter and covered with a cream sauce, but they didn't have enough substance for her idea of good table bread." Isn't this the truth?! (Such bread does make good peanut butter 'n' jelly sandwiches - though folded over, not cut.)

"The wastefulness of American packaging shocked us all... Fully half the weight of our purchases seemed to go into the trash barrel. The economical Clementine began to save paper bags, until the pile became overwhelming." Don't I know it! Sounds like my wife.

The book's first 150 pages comprise Samuel's narrative regarding Clementine's initial admission into the household, and her subsequent expatriation to Massachusetts. This section contains a few recipes relevant to the text, and a number of B&W sketches, perhaps pencil/charcoal originals, by the author himself. These sketches are truly marvelous works of art depicting locations described: the family's homes in Senlis and Marblehead, the Senlis main shopping street, a favorite French cafe, Boston's Faneuil Hall Market, shady Marblehead lanes, and many others. The book's final 100 pages is a compilation of Clementine's recipes revised by Samuel's daughter, Narcisse. (Clementine didn't stay with the Chamberlains, for a reason I won't reveal here.)

CLEMENTINE IN THE KITCHEN is a must-have addition for anyone interested in food, the time necessary for experimenting with French cooking, and the metabolism to absorb unscathed lots of butter and cream sauces. Unfortunately, I don't have the last two. So, let's see - what frozen dinner gets popped into the microwave tonight?

Although not discussed much publicly (and the reviewers below don't seem aware of it), Clementine was an imaginary character that Samuel Chamberlain made up when his friend at "Gourmet" asked him to contribute to the magazine. It's written as a memoir, but it changes the feel for me when I know it's a made-up character. Laura Shapiro wrote about this in her recent book, "Something From the Oven." Also, the recipes are hard to follow, unlike Julia Child's French recipes.

If you've been reading heavy, deep, take-themselves-way-too-seriously type books lately this might be just the ticket if you want to take a break. It's a fast read and if you enjoy reading recipes/cookbooks then you'll love this.

The entire second half of the book is a cookbook and every recipe looks great! I can't wait to try a few.

My only complaint is the use of French was a little tough for a non-French speaking person. I don't mind a word here and there but there were whole sentences and/or paragraphs occasionally. There was no translation so at times I felt a little left out. I completely understand why the author did this and since I like to also read books that use lots of Spanish (a language I do speak a bit of) I know if you speak French you'll love the book all the more for it.

If you love cooking, eating and want to read about some really lovely people then don't let the French thing stop you. Just don't be surprised.

You'll love Clementine,and if you aren't american,and live in the U.S.,you'll relate to Clementine's disorientation in some things (complete meals in a box???,big supermarkets,no separate stores for the meat,the bread,the vegetables??).
The recipes are delightful,but,if you are watching how much fat goes in your diet,then don't buy this book to relay on daily basis,there is a lot of bacon,butter and cream in this book!!!.

Beautifully written and illustrated and new. I could care less whether or not Clementine actually existed. I bought this edition expecting it to be a true reprint of what was, until I lost it, my favorite cookbook of all time, the 1963 edition. That edition had the best, absolutely the best, recipe for Boeuf Bourgignon that I have ever tasted. I followed it exactly and received rave reviews from French guests as well as from Americans. The new edition arrived. To my horror and amazement, the recipe for Boeuf Bourgignon had been fiddled with. Mon Dieu! Why? Was I wrong? I bought a copy of the 1963 edition and a quick comparison showed I wasn't. I've yet to compare other recipes. Perhaps the fiddling has been extensive. Mind you, this new edition is beautifully written and illustrated. I'm glad to have it. But ... the 1963 edition is better. It doesn't look as pretty, but its the book to buy.

I don't need to recount the synopsis: a très jolie vignette of the life of an ex-pat American family in France in the mid 1930s, with their French cook. Everything in this little story is perfection in defiance of reality. Picture if you will, a French marché where one can pile just-picked haricots verts on top of new potatoes, and buy fresh cheese, butter and eggs. Oh look, a bunch of rascally children scampering around an unshaven accordion player and his wife who is trying to sell sheet music, c'est charmant! If one reads this with one square centimeter of one's toe still attached to the real world, as I did, one could not resist a little smirk, because there's nothing charming about this picture of a man a half-step from poverty trying to scratch out a living as a street performer. In this world, the hired cook obligingly and tirelessly turns out table after tables of cuisine de bonne femme, every corner in Paris is dotted with café-restaurants whose patrons leisurely enjoy a sportsmanly round of belote, or boules, or billiard before settling down on pristine marble-top tables under rainproof awnings of tree branches and pour themselves a glass from the generous carafes of vin rouge. It's unreal!

Half of this book is recipes, which I deem to be near useless due to their inaccessibility from our modern life. Braised jellied beef tongue repose next to roast duck with white turnips. This is country French cooking of 50 years ago, heavy with wine, butter and cream. Some could be considered classics, but the instructions are very simple and has little in ways of technique. I suspect most people who read this book skip over the recipes. Pick up one of Le Cordon Bleu cookbooks if you want to cook French.

The best part of this book is a translation from an old French cookbook for Escargots De Bourgogne. It's a gem! Is this even a recipe?

"You ambush them in the morning, while they are parading nonchalantly on the humid leaf, when their slow, fleshy promenade makes one think of a voluptuous woman shuddering under a gross and clumsy caress. ... The beast beats the air in distress with its bewildered tentacles and then retreats glowering into its kiosk, like a much-teased maiden who rushes sobbing to her bedroom. But no pity! These melodramatic gestures no longer move the soul of a gourmet."

More along that vein of florid prose, it's a great detour from the dry practicality of the recipes we encounter these days.

One more thing bothered me, besides the picture-perfect pastoral prettiness. The author is Samuel Chamberlain, who was supposedly writing as Phineas Beck, the young boy of the fictional Beck family. Phineas wrote the foreword to set the tone. However, the narrative voice is definitely not of Phineas, but as the father of the family. Some illustrations are captioned as "Maison Beck, Senlis," and another as "Courtyard of the Chamberlain House, Senlis." This narrative inconsistency breaks the flow. One other reviewer pointed out that Clementine is an imaginary character invented by the author and not a real person as this roman a clef intends for us to believe. Ruth Reichl is the editor of Gourmet magazine, she also is the editor for Modern Library's Food Series, surely she could have said something in the preface? This smacks of artful dissembling to me, readers don't like to be insulted this way.

What a fun,funny and well-written book.
And the recipes are worth trying as well.
My nephew introduced me to this book and I had to have a copy.
I was grateful that Amazon had it for sale and reasonably priced.
I even ordered a few more copies as gifts for gourmand friends.

As an avid cookbook reader, this is one of my all time favorites. (I even bought it twice, because I was forced to get rid of it when I moved cross country years ago.) Yes, it is true that most of the recipes are perhaps too high in caloric intake to be of practical use for the contemporary cook, but they are secondary to the story that unfolds within the pages. Whether Clementine was a real person is beside the point. The story chronicles a time that was simpler and idyllic, even while the impending war in Europe was starting to bubble up into the consciousness of those who lived there. This is a fairy tale about Clementine, a poor girl who had no future to speak of had she stayed in France, but who instead was able to seize a piece of the American Dream by virtue of a chance meeting with the Becks. Not only does she become their equal, but gets her Prince Charming too! What more can you ask for from an escapist book?