CHAPTER 38

WHERE IT ALL CAME FROM

A BIBLIOGRAPHY

“You are quite right,” the count was saying. “The ideal cuisine should display an individual character, it should offer a menu judiciously chosen from the kitchen workshops of the most diverse lands and people—a menu reflecting the chef’s alert and fastidious taste.”

—Norman Douglas, South Wind (1917), quoted in my journals, July 26, 1970

Inasmuch as what has happened to American cuisine since 2005 has been influenced by Spain’s El Bulli and its continuation in Europe, like Noma, and a handful of well-known books from them, see Pau Arenos, and Arzak and Adria. Also Irving Davis’s 1969 Catalan cookbook, which inspired many eye-opening combinations of ingredients for me. I have left this “classic” list as it was in 2003. Then every book listed was in my library (except for one), and I had read them all. All the quotations that are not from books are from magazines, press clippings, and my daily culinary and personal journals that I kept over the years. Any omissions tell a story, though not always.

A.W. A Book of Cookrye. London: Edward, 1591.

This book is as far back as you need to go in English. It is small, easy to read, and, apart from how to cook a crane, a curlew, a bustard, and a bittern, it shows the first faint stirrings of a modern organization table service for later centuries.

Acton, Eliza. Modern Cookery for Private Families. London, 1845 and 1855.

Because she has “truffles potted in butter” prepared “for the breakfast table,” and that will always get my vote, and because she was a favorite of Elizabeth David (who gave me the book in 1974). My standby carrot soup of Chez Panisse in the early days was from Acton, using water instead of stock for pure vegetable flavors, as did Richard Olney and Marcel Boulestin before him. This is a book that comes from “instinct and sheer intelligence rather than experience,” and it is more interesting than that of the later Mrs. Beeton, who copied her.

Adams, Charlotte. The Four Seasons Cookbook. New York: Crescent Books, 1971.

Read the foreword by James Beard for an introduction to perhaps America’s most influential restaurant of the twentieth century. And notice the fiddlehead ferns, fried parsley, wild asparagus, and a large American wine list as early as 1959.

Alexander, Victoria, and Genevieve Harris. A Taste of Australia: The Bathers’ Pavilion Cookbook. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1995.

Because the Bathers’ Pavilion restaurant on the beach at Balmoral (near Sydney) was the West Beach Cafe, Trumps, and Michael’s (Los Angeles) of Australia all rolled into one. What was New California decor and cooking became the New Australian, with Tony and Gay Bilson’s Berowra Waters Inn, Neil Perry’s Blue Water Grill at Bondi, Phillip Searle, Damien Pignolet, Tetsuya Wakuda, and a few others.

Alford, Jeffrey, and Naomi Duguid. Hot Sour Salty Sweet. New York: Artisan, 2000.

“A culinary journey though Southeast Asia,” and no journey in the area of the Mekong Delta (southern China, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam) has ever been more mouthwateringly photographed or written about—ever.

Ali-Bab. Gastronomic Pratique. Paris: Flammarion, 1928.

A book that includes a regime for how to eat very well without getting fat, showing that we did not invent concerns over eating healthfully. A very fashionable book for chefs to have read in the eighties. It grasps all your senses and elates the historian in you without a hint of cobwebs; rather it blows them away. It certainly did for me in 1974, when I used it at Chez Panisse, and then later at Stars.

Allen, Ida C. Bailey. Mrs. Allen’s Cook Book. Boston: Small, Maynard, 1917.

Quite before her time with health concerns, her answer being to banish all bad cooking, even though she overcooks the vegetables by ten minutes.

America’s Cook Book. Compiled by the Home Institute of the New York Herald Tribune. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937, 1940; rev. ed., 1942.

Included because my mother bought it the year I was born, and cooked with it for forty years. My copy is covered in food, stained, and dog-eared. And because it is very Rector’s (restaurant) and a prequel to Beard. He must have known this book, or Josie Wilson did, when writing his monumental American Cookery.

Anger, Kenneth. Hollywood Babylon II. American ed. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1984.

I lived with Kenneth while he wrote the first Hollywood Babylon, almost ten years before this book was published. And because it shows Nick Ray and others in the film industry who, because of Alice Waters’s boyfriend at the Pacific Film Archive at the time, were very much part of the scene of Chez Panisse. And because the cover shows what too many hamburgers, if they are not truffled, can do for you. Poor Liz.

Arenos, Pau. Los Genios del Fuego. Barcelona: Peninsula, 1999.

If you want to know what is going on in the most recent frontier of cooking, this is the book. It is visually in the style of White Heat and then Charlie Trotter’s books, complete with the drawings done by the chefs to show how to present the dishes. All about ten geniuses of Spain in the vanguard: Ferran Adria, Jean Luc Figueras, Santi Santa Maria, and so on.

Aresty, Esther B. The Delectable Past. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1964.

The best contemporary of the fast passes at two thousand years of cooking, and still one of the easiest, most amusing, and educational to read. See also Jean-Louis Flandrin.

Aron, Jean-Paul. The Art of Eating in France: Manners and Menus in Nineteenth Century France. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.

An absolutely fascinating book! Its accounts of the magnificent Very’s restaurant in Paris inspired me in 1976 to start thinking of the Stars concept: Could I have the likes of my hero Grimod de la Reynière eat there or in a café next door every week as he did at Very’s?

Arzak, Juan Mari, and Ferran Adria. Arzuk & Adria 2000–2001. Spain, 1999.

This book was written to show the food that turned one century into another. These men should know. And the photograph of one of the world’s great foods, el jamón ibérico (that most perfect of hams), makes my mouth water.

Audot, Louis Eustache. La Cuisimère de La Campagne et de La Vìlle. Paris: Audot, 1818.

This is the only book on this list that I do not have and have not read, but I mention it because I have been told it was the French home cookbook for a century after its publication and because again, that early on, it is about women’s cooking.

Baldick, Robert. Dinner at Magny’s. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1971.

One of the three books that really made me want to come up with the Stars concept and success. Just a brilliant book, and not only because the author is a fan of Huysmans! Magny’s was the watering hole “of the leading novelists, critics, historians, and scientists of nineteenth century-France.”

Barry, Naomi. “Escoffier.” Gourmet, October 1989.

Because Naomi is a wonderful writer, and she really gets her man in this article.

Batterberry, Michael, and Ariane Batterberry. On the Town in New York from 1776 to the Present. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973.

Because these authors were in love with New York when it was not fashionable to be, and visionaries to see that the town would become the world’s best culinary scene again, especially if anyone knew about its very colorful and creative past. Think truck farms run by a single restaurant (Delmonico’s) on Long Island in the late nineteenth century.

Beard, James. American Cookery. Boston: Little, Brown, 1972.

This book shows that Jim knew how to take his place in history. Still, it ain’t no Ali-Bab.

. Delights and Prejudices. New York: Atheneum, 1964.

The best of his books, and maybe the only one he actually wrote. The true James Beard—or at least one of them.

. Fish Cookery. Boston: Little, Brown, 1954; new ed., 1976.

Not the greatest book, even though it does have recipes for fresh sardines. But in 1976 James was already pointing out the severe marine “ecological changes” since the first edition. And because the inscription to me in 1976 says: “For Jeremiah—who knows so much! Love, James Beard.”

. The James Beard Cookbook. With Isabel E. Calvert. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1961; rev. ed., 1970.

Note that the copyright is 1959; you’ll know how he was thinking that early on. In 1970 the publishers hailed this as a classic, “as essential to the modern American kitchen as the stove itself.” James calls it “a basic cookbook.” Not as good as the Rector’s 1928 book, and it is already diluted by the home economics virus of the period after the world wars. But a Beard classic nonetheless.

Beaton, Cecil. “The Art of Table Decoration.” Gourmet, December 1969.

Beaton is impeccable, and this advice is still amusing for the twenty-first century. In 1969 I read and recorded in my culinary notebooks: “A treat need not be a luxury; a banquet need not include caviar. Imagination is the most important ingredient.”

Beck, Simone, with Louisette Bertholle and Julia Child. Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Vol. 1. New York: Knopf, 1961.

The book (especially the first volume) that launched a thousand young cooks into vats of butter, cream, and wonderful cooking.

Beebe, Lucius. The Stork Club Bar Book. New York: Rinehart, 1946.

One cannot visit the twentieth century without saying hello to Lucius Beebe. And this book, from one of New York’s “various plush and chromium cocktail zoos,” is all about the last time the city was at its height.

La Belle France: A Gourmet’s Guide to the French Provinces. Preface by André Maurois. New York: Golden Press; London: Paul Hamly, 1964.

A stunning book that was countless years of inspiration for Chez Panisse and, early on, for my regional festivals. Perhaps no book more than this one inspired Alice Waters. See the newer and equally magnificent version of Robert Freson, A Taste of France.

Bemelmans, Ludwig. La Bonne Table. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1964.

A true New York boulevardier in the old style. Incredibly civilized stories of his “lifetime love affair with the art of dining” in the now-mythic places like L’Ousteau de Beaumanière in Provence, Le Pavilion in New York, and La Tour d’Argent in Paris. Everything from sausages and beer to caviar and champagne. Material originally from Playboy in 1960 (“Caviar”), Holiday, Town & Country, Vogue, and The New Yorker.

Bey, Pilaf [Norman Douglas]. Venus in the Kitchen, or Love’s Cookery Book. New York: Viking Press, 1952.

Did the great Harry Cipriani know of this book when he wrote Heloise and Bellinis? This book is even more wonderful.

Bianchini, Francesco, and Francisco Corbetta. The Complete Book of Fruits and Vegetables. Illustrations by Marilena Pistoia. New York: Crown, 1975.

The colored illustrations tell more than a photo ever could. When this book came out, I bought it immediately and showed it to my partners at Chez Panisse with glee: Here were the things that I wanted to grow, the wild radish, the purslane, Treviso, New Zealand spinach, and the sea rocket and borage I had cooked with in Maine. I was given a copy by Linda Guenzel, who wrote The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook; she inscribed it by quoting Larousse on what is a vegetable, and then said: “You, the high priest of all culinary, have given us vegetables as Larousse may never have known.”

Bittman, Mark. How to Cook Everything. New York: John Wiley, 1998.

The new Joy of Cooking.

Blanc, Georges. The French Vineyard Table. New York: Clarkson Potter, 1997.

The most visually evocative and beautifully done of the French chef books of the nineties, by my favorite French country chef, who carried on the cooking of the amazing women of Vonnas and Lyons.

Bober, Phyllis Pray. Art, Culture, and Cuisine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

A very impressive and illustrated culinary history that “examines cooking through the dual lens of archaeology and art history.” Finally someone who can explain what that classic period of reclining while dining was all about.

Boeckmann, Susie, and Natalie Rebeiz-Nielsen. Caviar. London: Mitchell Beazley, 1999.

Called the definitive book, it probably is, if you read it with the Inga Saffron book. The book inspires one to go out and eat caviar—while one still can.

Borrel, Anne, with Alain Senderens and Jean-Bernard Naudin. Dining with Proust. New York: Random House, 1992.

This could have been a very silly book. But the food is real, thanks to the great Parisian chef Alain Senderens, who understands the grand presentations of the era. The food in the very good photographs is historically correct and delicious looking. What a way to learn history, with Nesselrode pudding, spiced beef in jelly, and the “Lunch at Reveillon: scrambled eggs with bacon, lobster American style, hare à l’allemande, rose, and macaroon preserve.” Divine.

Bourdain, Anthony. Kitchen Confidential. New York: Bloomsbury, 2000.

In Bourdain’s own words, “Twenty-five years of sex, drugs, bad behavior, and haute cuisine.” Adored this book, laughed and cried (in terror of recognition) all through it. And made me want to do it all over again. The restaurant business, not cry. Though some would say they are the same thing.

Boulestin, X. Marcel. Ease and Endurance. London: Home & Van Thal, 1948.

Elizabeth David gave me this book on “the first day of summer, 1978,” after a seven-hour lunch. It shows how Boulestin covered the twenties, thirties, and forties, mixing artists, socialites, and food. See page 90 for the description of his new restaurant in Covent Garden. He used the artists of the day, creating a decor that should make decorators today gasp in admiration. And because thirty-five years later I tried to buy the place.

. “Finer Cooking.” Vogue, London, 1923–.

Read anything by Marcel, and this is a very good introduction.

. What Shall We Have Today? London: William Heinemann, 1931.

If you want to see Elizabeth David before Elizabeth herself, this is her hero and mentor with his relentlessly modern mind. As a young man he was secretary to the Colette-Willy ménage, then escaped the drama of that household and, already an Anglophile (taking Colette to tea at the English Dairy in Paris), fled to England, taking with him a few Modiglianis that he had bought for twelve pounds. Simple French Cooking for English Homes came out in 1923, written for single people and working women who have to cook without much money or time. Sound familiar? Think Richard Olney, only fifty years earlier: “All these soups . . . must be made with plain water. When made with the addition of stock they lose all character and cease to be what they were intended to be.” No statement could be more “modern” in every way, or more cutting-edge. Also because he says that on charcoal is the only way to grill.

Boulud, Daniel, and Peter Kaminsky. Chef Daniel Boulud. New York: Assouline, 2002.

A day in the life of Daniel, and a wonderful book if you can get past the crazy graphics. I can.

Bradley, Richard. The Country Housewife and Lady’s Director. London, 1727, 1732, 1736; repr. 1736 ed. London: Prospect Books, 1980.

A vastly entertaining and intelligent book with recipes inspiring for now—look at the Sorrel Tart and the Small Suckers of Artichokes. Not at all esoteric, until we get to the Viper Soup.

Brillat-Savarin. Physiologie du Gout. Paris: Michel Levy Frères, 1873.

Is any comment necessary? Well, perhaps. See Lucien Tendret.

Brown, Eleanor, and Bob Brown. Culinary Americana. New York: Roving Eye Press, 1961.

One hundred years of cookbooks, published in the United States from 1860 to1960—so an invaluable bibliographical resource.

Brown, Helen. Helen Brown’s West Coast Cook Book. New York: Little, Brown, 1952.

Helen was an absolute favorite of James Beard. This was stuff for the public, McCall’s, House & Garden, and so on, and is so very American. It gave me the nerve in 1976 to start putting the origins of ingredients on the menu.

The Browns. America Cooks. Garden City, NY: Halcyon House, 1940.

“Favorite Recipes from Forty-eight States,” including Scuppernong Pie and a traditional breakfast from the Shenandoah Valley. Packed with Americana before the canned and frozen foods.

Bullock, Mrs. Helen. The Wìllamsburg Art of Cookery. Wìlliamsburg, VA: Colonial Williamsburg, 1939.

Very entertaining, but what rivets me is the account of the books consulted for this work: Hannah Glasse, Miss Leslie, John Farley, Mrs. Mary Randolph’s The Virginia Housewife. Perfect taste!

Capon, Robert Farrar. The Supper of the Lamb. New York: Doubleday, 1967.

An inspiring book. Included here for the preface; for the dedication, which is to his wife, whom he calls “the lightning behind all this thunder,” because he believes that an onion can save you from hell, and because he says, “The world exists, not for what it means but for what it is. The purpose of mushrooms is to be mushrooms; wine is in order to be wine: things are precious before they are contributory.” That is the cook’s true guide.

Carson, Rachel. The Silent Spring. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962.

A huge influence on me in the early sixties, which after my early foraging efforts in the 1960s, and later, in the early seventies, made me want to start growing our own produce and recycling for the restaurants.

Chamberlain, Samuel, and Narcissa Chamberlain. Bouquet de France. New York: Gourmet Books, 1952.

Defining the art of a culinary tour, in the days when you could just drop by almost anywhere in France and get a good meal. A sensibility we should recover.

Cherikoff, Vic, and Jennifer Isaacs. The Bush Food Handbook: How to Gather, Grow, Process and Cook Australian Wild Foods. Balmain, Australia: Ti Tree Press, n.d [1990s].

This is serious book. Not a Birkenstock in sight. It shows how seriously the Australians took over from California in reworking regional aesthetics to make a new culture and cuisine. Fascinating book and beautifully presented.

Child, Mrs. The American Frugal Housewife. Boston: Carter, Hendee, 1832.

One can tire of the thousands of household management books, but this one is small and powerful. And this woman, at a time when a woman could not go into the supper room at a party unless escorted by a man, was a newspaperwoman, magazine editor, gardener, novelist, poet, reformer, and a friend of Whitman, Lowell, and Bryant. She also hid runaway slaves, and her first important antislavery writing in America nearly ruined her.

Cipriani, Harry. The Harry’s Bar Cookbook. New York: Bantam Books, 1991.

My hero.

. Heloise and Bellinis. New York: Little, Brown, 1986.

When I read this book I knew that Harry at Harry’s in Venice and Tom Margittai at the Four Seaons in New York were having as much fun as restaurateurs as I was!

Cocteau, Jean. Past Tense (Diaries). New York: Harcourt Brace, 1987.

Because the highly intelligent Ezra Pound thought Cocteau was the most intelligent Frenchman he had met, along with Francis Picabia. For “Eggs Picabia” see Alice B. Toklas’s cookbook.

Colette. Prisons et Paradis. Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1986.

For the truffles and her sensibility about everything, including food.

. The Pure and the Impure. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1967.

“To receive from someone happiness—is it not to choose the sauce in which we want to be served up?”

Conrad, Barnaby. Absinthe. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1988.

Now that absinthe is legal again in Europe, and being manufactured in Thailand as well as in Spain and France, one should read about this most subtle green elixir to be sipped at “the green hour” because, as someone said, “Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.”

Cooking. Edited by Barbara Kafka. Stamford, CT: Cuisinart Publications, 1978–.

Great little magazine edited by the phenomenally brilliant Barbara Kafka. Writers are Naomi Barry, James Beard, Gault and Millau, Abby Mandel, Elizabeth David, and so on. Read also all the books by Barbara, including the wonderful book Roasting.

Core, Philip. Camp: The Lie That Tells the Truth. Foreword by George Melly. London: Plexus, 1984.

Not just because the book is dedicated to me, “champagne en campagne,” but because it covers a lot of my early imprints and aesthetic lessons: Aubrey Beardsley, Cecil Beaton, Prince Yusupov, the Sitwells, the sixties, Robert de Montesquiou and Boni de Castellane (the Belle Époque’s most elegant men), Jean Cocteau, Edward James, Ronald Firbank, Diaghilev, D’Annunzio (the perfect peaches, in the perfect bowl, all wrapped in the perfect silk scarf—all made at his villa), Noël Coward, Colette, Carême (who made the campiest remark of all of them about the fine arts being five in number, including pastry making, of which architecture is a branch), Capri, Jean-Michel Frank, Christian Bérard, and Lou Reed. These are all the people who made the most of their faults, because after all, “Camp is a disguise that fails.”

Courtine, Robert. The Hundred Glories of French Cooking. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1973.

A book wonderful for its unparalleled illustrations—the beautiful chefs in boots, the photo of Curnonsky at lunch, the fish market section at Les Halles. Treat yourself.

Cox, Mrs. Samuel R. The Parker Cook Book. Abilene, TX, 1932.

Not the Parker House hotel cookbook, but in this one, for the Presbyterian Church, they still ate caviar, and the nonalcoholic drinks are state of the art.

Craddock, Harry. The Savoy Cocktail Book. London: Constable, 1930.

If you haven’t seen the design of this perfect Art Deco book, you are really missing out. The ultimate recipes, and then there is the foreword to the wine section, by Colette.

Crowninshield, Frank. The Unofficial Palace of New York: A Tribute to the Waldorf-Astoria. New York: Waldorf-Astoria, 1939.

For the Sert murals, the chapter by Elsa Maxwell, and the American menus with Diamond Back Terrapin, Chicken California Style, Roast Mountain Sheep, and Basket of Lobster, all at one dinner in 1899. See the 1937 menu for an “Idaho Dinner,” which then called out the origins of the ingredients: Snake River, Twin Falls, Sawtooth Range, Jerome County, Boise Valley, and Lone Pine, Idaho.

Culinaria. Cologne: Konemann, 1998.

Huge, glossy books that entice you to pick them up and then make you think nothing this obvious-looking could be good. They are, and full of gripping information and illustrations. The United States, France, and Italy are the ones I have.

Curnonsky. Traditional Recipes of the Provinces of France. Translated by Edwin Lavin. London: W. H. Allen, 1961.

The book from which I did the famous Curnonsky festival at Chez Panisse, and the book I used to give as Christmas presents. A beautiful book—if a bit recherché.

David, Elizabeth. “Edouard de Pomiane.” Gourmet, March 1970.

Because it opens with “Art demands an impeccable technique; science a little understanding.”

. French Provincial Cooking. New York: Harper & Row, 1960.

I was handed this book on my first day of work as executive chef at Chez Panisse by Gene Opton, the woman running it at the time, and was told it was the bible to cook from. Very great book, and Elizabeth’s main work as far as most people are concerned.

. “Marcel Boulestin.” Gourmet, August 1969.

The article that turned me on to Boulestin, and again on to Elizabeth.

. “Norman Douglas.” Gourmet, February 1969.

Because on the back page of Elizabeth’s copy of Old Calabria, Norman wrote: “Always do as you please, send everybody to Hell, and take the consequences. Damned good rule of life.”

Dalí, Salvador. Les Diners de Gala. New York: Felicie, 1973.

Pure Dalí, and how to sodomize a leg of lamb. As I did at Chez Panisse right after reading it. Full-color food from Paris’s Lassere, Maxim’s, and La Tour d’Argent.

Davidson, Alan. The Oxford Companion to Food. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.

In the tradition of the great dictionaries of food (see Dumas), this is Alan at his best—erudite, and not afraid of his always-riveting opinions. A must for food reference today.

Davis, Irving. A Catalan Cookery Book: A Collection of Impossible Recipes. Edited by Patience Gray. Paris: Lucien Scheler, 1969.

Inasmuch as some knowledgeable people say that right now the best and most daring food in the West is in Spain, and because I have loved this book and the food in it since it was published. Inspiring the food at Stars. Rabbit with snails indeed! Pretty good with monkfish, too—the snails, I mean. In the early seventies people thought I was mad for pushing this food and this book. See Arzak and Adria, and Pau Arenos.

De Croze, Austin. What to Eat and Drink in France. London: Frederick Warne, 1931.

Written “for tourists so they can choose from any province [of France] the typical local dishes.” Important early Chez Panisse source.

De Gouy, Jean. La Cuisine et La Patisserie Bourgeoises. Paris: Lebegue et Cie, 1896.

Because this book is understandable to all, “à la portée de tous,” and because you will need this one to explain all the other ones. French cookbooks, that is.

De Groot, Roy Andries. The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1973.

This book blew me away, made me fall in love with France again, love De Groot again, and after I made everyone read it, and saw they loved it, set me off on a cooking frenzy of renewed enthusiasm at Chez Panisse in 1973. One of the books you would take in an overnight bag—your only luggage—when banished to a desert island. Also a huge favorite of Alice Waters.

Douglas, Norman. South Wind. London: Martin Secker, 1917. (Reprinted many times since first publication.)

“‘You are quite right,’ the count was saying. ‘The ideal cuisine should display an individual character, it should offer a menu judiciously chosen from the kitchen workshops of the most diverse lands and people—a menu reflecting the master’s alert and fastidious taste.’ South Wind.” Quoted in my journals, July 26, 1970.

Dubois, Urbain, and Emile Bernard. La Cuisine Classique. Paris: Chez les Auteurs, 1856.

Not just for the illustrations of those divine garnishes stuck on skewers (like whole truffles pierced with cockscombs and crayfish), or for the uniquely understandable descriptions of pieces montées, but because this book tells exactly what the difference is between the two services, French and Russian. From what I still hear of these terms bandied around in culinary academies, this book should be reread. Also, the style of the recipes is beautifully direct, straightforward, and definitive, and just before the similarly inspired Escoffier.

Ducasse, Alain. Flavors of France. New York: Artisan, 1998.

Finally a book by a chef (one of the most famous in the world) that is the food you can cook from, and the photographs show you can. Alain knows that more than four main ingredients on a plate is too many.

Ducasse, Alain, and Jean-François Piège. Grand Livre de Cuisine d’Alain Ducasse. Paris: ADP, 2001.

Not since Prosper Montagné’s Larousse Gastronomique (1938), Escoffier’s Le Guide Culinaire, and Henri-Paul Pellaprat’s L’Art Culinaire Moderne (1935) has a chef accomplished a work that codifies the cooking of a nation and the time. This one does.

Dumas, Alexandre. Dictionary of Cuisine. Translated by Louis Colman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1958.

My bedside reading in college, and I could not wait to buy the unedited version. I never tire of this book. See Alan Davidson and Waverley Root. This edition was severely cut. The new, less edited one is Alexandre Dumas, Le Grand Dicuonnaire de Cuisine (Turin: Henry Veyrier, 1978).

Dumaine, Alexandre. Ma Cuisine. Paris: Pensée Moderne, 1972.

Richard Olney, in our correspondence in 1973, told me to read this. Dumaine became my model. I wanted a restaurant that people would think “worth the journey.”

Dupleix, Jill. New Food: From the New Basics to the New Classics. Port Melbourne, Australia: William Heinemann, 1994.

Tells the story of why the nineties were not going to be the eighties. This woman loves to think, eat, write, and tell you all about it. Very clever indeed.

Durack, Terry. Yum. Port Melbourne, Australia: William Heinemann, 1996.

Yum indeed. By the husband of Jill Dupleix, this book is very nineties, or the new Australian intelligence, the worldwide view. There is a list of who he thinks are the best chefs and restaurateurs in the world at the time of his writing, including my favorites Bruno Loubet of London’s L’Odéon, Georges Blanc, of course, Arrigo Cipriani, and Pierre Koffrnan.

Durrell, Lawrence. The Black Book. Paris: Obelisk Press, 1938; New York and Paris: Olympia Press, 1959.

Because the book opens with “Today there is a gale blowing up from the Levant,” the wind withering the soft gold shavings of hair along the thighs. “The very nipples turn hard and black on the breasts of women, while the figs roast.” Who needs a cooking lesson? And if it isn’t about food it is all the senses that cooking conjures up. The hero tastefully identifies the scent on the air: “It’s the girls’ bogs again!” Such an amateur of odors must be admired. How did he know it was girls? This is the book to read if dining alone.

Ebert-Schifferer, Sybille. Still Life. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999.

A thousand words to describe what food was on artists’ and other people’s minds—and then there are the paintings.

Escoffier, Auguste. Le Guide Culinaire. Paris: Flammarion, 1903; 3d ed., Paris: E. Grevin, 1912.

There was an edition in 1907 as well, but the 1912 has the introductions of both the second and the first, and these are the beginning of modern cooking. Do not overlook the mention of his “maître” Urban Dubois. And the pieces on stocks and “fonds” are the bible to this day. Also the book I used for the Escoffier festival at Chez Panisse in 1974, which put the restaurant on the local and national map.

. Ma Cuisine. Translated by Vyvyan Holland. London: Paul Hamlyn, 1965.

My first cookbook as a teenager and the first that I read constantly from cover to cover. The mainstay reference for my recreational graduate school cooking binges and early lessons.

Escoffier, Auguste, ed. Le Carnet d’Epicure. Paris, 1908–12[?].

A lesson in culinary history that cannot be missed. Check out the Salad Folle—with haricots verts, foie gras, lobster, hazelnut oil, and so on—in 1908, sixty years before everyone thought they had invented it.

Evelyn, John. Acetaria, A Discourse of Sallets. London: B. Tooke, 1699.

Because three hundred years later everyone agrees this is one of the truly delightful early cookbooks: the dedication is totally mad, the preface about the “universal plantation” is deranged, 90 percent of this “cookbook” is about gardening and life, only 10 percent is about recipes (a delicious one for artichokes). Not a cookbook at all, but read it and see how serious and how much fun the seventeenth century was for cooks.

Farley, John. The London Art of Cookery. 7th ed. London, 1792.

Farley was the “principal cook at the London Tavern.” If you do nothing else with this democratically approached and concisely worded book, look at the plates showing the arrangement on the table of the various dishes per course—many books talk about this “French” service, but few show how it was done. This is “Simple Food,” and the recipes are beautifully written.

Farmer, Fannie Merritt. The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. Boston: Little, Brown, 1937.

A bit overrated but historically interesting, and do not bother with any editions after this one. Read “a few rules for successful dining”: as in use foods only at the height of the season, use generous-size plates so the food is not crowded, think always of the wine and how the food will affect it, and so on. All this in 1937!

Fashions in Foods in Beverly Hills. Beverly Hills, CA: Beverly Hills Woman’s Club, 1931.

If there was any doubt what America ate after the fall of American food (post–World War I) and before the revolution, here it is. Carrot Ring, Tamale Pie, Goulash, Cottage Cheese Salad, Wakimoli Salad, and Divinity. Most of it pretty good, which is why most of the country is still eating it!

Fernandez-Armesto, Dr. Felipe. Food: A History. London: Macmillan, 2001.

From the invention of cooking to feeding the giant maw of the contemporary world.

Fielding, Daphne. The Duchess of Jermyn Street: The Life and Good Times of Rosa Lewis of the Cavendish Hotel. Boston: Little, Brown, 1964.

Because if you did not see the show from the BBC more than three times you are deprived. The way I always wanted to treat my customers, and did. An absolute inspiration for any truly inspired restaurateur! From kitchen maid to culinary genius, mistress of the king, and prankster extraordinaire, one of the great individualistic women of the century. And discreet to boot.

Firbank, Ronald. Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli. London: Duckworth, 1926.

Thank God there is one mention of food, “white menthe” (and then only because the dog was covered in it); otherwise I could not include this inspiration of my college years.

Flandrin, Jean-Louis, and Massimo Montanari. Food: A Culinary History from Antiquity to the Present. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

Jacques Pépin said this book is “essential reading for the historian and the lover of social studies as well as the modern cook and gourmet.” The title says it all: if you are interested in food, this is the book for you.

Foods of the World. Edited by Time-Life Books, James Beard and Michael Field, consultants. New York: Time-Life Books, 1970.

I have to mention Michael Field. Cathy Simon, Michael Palmer, and I cooked a lot from his Michael Field’s Cooking School when we were in college. I could never get a straight answer out of anyone, let alone Beard, about what he was like. When asked, Beard would get quiet, as when he knew someone was talented, admired the talent, but for some private reason didn’t want to praise it. Anyway, these books were of enormous excitement and inspiration to me and my friends. I could not wait for the mail to bring the new issue. Vienna was good, Classic French wonderful, and American Cooking: Southern Style was the one most of my friends cooked from and the one that got us all on to Thomas Jefferson and hams. Still a great read.

La France à Table. Rue de Castellane, Paris, early 1930s.

A magazine with writers like Colette, Gaston Derys, Austin de Croze, Curnónsky talking about cooking. When they talk about cooking in the ashes of the fire, for example, it is the true flavor of the regions and countryside of France.

Franz, Mark. Farallon. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2001.

Definitely a chef’s and a beautiful book. For those who love to cook fish and want to know all about it, Mark tells you how.

Freson, Robert. The Taste of France. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1983.

One of the most stunningly beautiful photography cookbooks ever, and one that created a style. The writers include Richard Olney, Ann Willan (La Varenne), Jill Norman (Elizabeth David’s literary executor), Alan Davidson, and Caroline Conran.

Fussell, Betty. I Hear America Cooking. New York: Viking Press, 1986.

Because she educates us away from the traps of slavishly believing in “authentic” and “regional” without knowing where the worth of the concepts lie.

Gattey, Charles Neilson. Foie Gras and Trumpets. London: Constable, 1984.

For those who love to give grand and expensive parties, or who love to read about them. You have not lived until you have read about Kessler’s “gondola party” for the English king, or “the Awful Seeley Dinner” when Little Egypt was served naked from a pie and the police had to raid Sherry’s (again). The Savoy, Boulestin’s, the Waldorf, Delmonico’s, Rector’s. All these great restaurants and the dish about them is all here.

Gibbons, Euell. Stalking the Wild Asparagus. Philadelphia: McKay, 1962.

The father of foraging, and the book that inspired me in the sixties, on the beaches of Maine and at my Massachusetts farm, before I got into the restaurant business, to grow my own and to forage.

Ginor, Michael. Foie Gras: A Passion. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1999.

A book about this delicious fat that really works. The best I know in English on the subject.

Glasse, Hannah. The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy. Alexandria, VA: Printed for the author, 1805.

Because, according to John and Karen Hess, it was “the most popular cookbook in the colonies.” And for the section on American cooking.

Gopnik, Adam. “Is There a Crisis in French Cooking?” New Yorker, April 28 and May 5, 1997.

A piece of extraordinary intelligence. The fickle muse of French cooking, and where does she sit?

Gordon, Peter. The Sugar Club Cookbook. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1997.

The jacket says that Gordon is the Alastair Little (eighties) of the nineties. He’s cool. A book of the “de rigueur” (though I hope not “rigor mortis”) Marco Pierre White design school. He’s really searching the world for great flavors, but see the Australians ten years earlier.

Goloub, Hélène. 100 Recettes de Cuisine Russe. Paris: Self-published, 1924.

Perfect recipes for a cuisine that, for a dinner party, is still the most impactful.

The Good Cook. Richard Olney, consultant; editors of Time-Life. London and Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1979-

The best how-to teaching books there are, especially the English edition, and a series that I worked on with Richard, as well as doing a few of my own in Virginia. This series changed “how to” food photography for good.

Griffini, Orso Cesare, and Frances E. Vieta. I Tartúffi. Rome: Trevi Editore, 1973.

The book that, when I bought it in 1974, made me want to be the first to bring fresh truffles to California—and I was.

Grigson, Jane. The Art of Charcuterie. New York: Knopf, 1968.

It is not generally known how influential this book has been, but every time you taste a succulent double pork chop in America, it is because the chef read this book. All the brining done now in American restaurants is because of Jane. Cook pork or poultry without this book? Not well.

. British Cookery. New York: Atheneum, 1985.

A celebration of regionality by this most wonderful of women. Superb.

Guenzel, Linda R. Beyond Tears: The First Eight Years. Illustrations by David Lance Goines and Wesley B. Tanner. Berkeley, CA: Chez Panisse, 1979.

The collection of menus from August 28, 1971, to December 30, 1978, the day before my last day at the restaurant. The first chef was Victoria Kroyer, who later opened Pig by the Tail charcuterie across the street. I was the second. Linda knew this was the important period, as did Darrell Corti when he sent a funeral wreath in 1974 after my week of Escoffier dinners: “Chez Panisse can never be this great again.”

. The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook. New York: Random House, 1982.

The inscription in the copy given to me by Linda is “To Jeremiah—The inspiration, the raison d’etre, the creator of so much on these pages—without you, there would be no Chez Panisse, no cookbook. Truth shall triumph.”

Guérard, Michel. La Cuisine Gourmande. Paris: Robert Laffont, 1978.

This and the Troisgros book, with its revolutionary food and plate presentations, changed it all for young chefs in the United States. Nora Ephron said that this food did not have any impact on the way Americans eat at home, but to the extent that food magazines or TV shows have any effect on that eating, she’s wrong. But she’s right inasmuch as, in the hands of untalented cooks, the food became “non-nouvelle cuisine,” prompting Paul Bocuse (the self-proclaimed leader of the Young Turks) to say that “so-called” nouvelle cuisine “usually means not enough on your plate and too much on your bill.”

Guillot, André. La Grande Cuisine Bourgeoise. Paris: Flammarion, 1976.

This is the “cuisine bourgeoise,” as opposed to the “cuisine de la noblesse” that existed before the French Revolution. The three principles of this cooking are the best products (not the rarest), diversity of the dishes that can make up menus, and the rule of economy (nothing wasted). This book explains also how the change in politics and constitutions set the culture of how we eat today. Read the brief historical analysis of the rise of bourgeois cooking.

Hartley, Dorothy. Food in England. London: MacDonald & Jane’s, 1954–75.

I can’t remember if Elizabeth David admired Hartley’s scholarship or not (God help anyone whose work she didn’t), but I find the book great reading. Look at the unique and amazing sketches of ranges and roasting equipment. The food, she says, is “old fashioned, the way we [English] like it.” And when it’s “open apple tart after the pig,” with clotted cream, so do we all.

Hay, Donna. The New Cook. Sydney: Murdoch Books, 1997.

There are several books in this series of material from Australian Marie Claire, and I find them all visually inspiring. The photographs and the contents never fail to make me want to cook, and to conjure up new dishes. The price of the books is very right.

Hazan, Marcella. Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. New York: Knopf, 2001.

The way to get the best of the genius of Marcella in one book, this one comprising both Classic Italian Cookbook and More Classic Italian Cooking.

. Marcella’s Italian Kitchen. New York: Knopf, 1986.

Because, as I said on the back cover for her: “A perfect book . . .”

Herbst, Sharon Tyler. Never Eat More Than You Can Lift. New York: Broadway Books, 1997.

If you like books with “sayings” on food and wine, this is it. My favorite has always been what Lily Bollinger said about champagne, and she would have known: “I drink it when I’m happy and when I’m sad. Sometimes I drink it when I’m alone. When I have company I consider it obligatory. I trifle with it if I’m not hungry and drink it when I am. Otherwise I never touch it—unless I’m thirsty.” On my tombstone I hope.

Hess, John L., and Karen Hess. The Taste of America. New York: Grossman, 1977.

Read this if for no other reason than it made most of the famous names in the United States purple with rage, spluttering with outraged pride. I adored it. Seemed to me to hit what was going on with the commercial food industry in America at the time fairly squarely on the mark.

Hess, Karen. Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.

When I recommend centuries-old cookbooks here, I do cringe slightly with fear at how difficult the print and the language may be to decipher, let alone some of the terminology. This book is completely noted and annotated (“Layes is an old word for layers; porringers are individual bowls”) and therefore makes easy and fascinating reading of this family manuscript and treasure trove of “culinary secrets of some of our earliest colonists, part of our American heritage from England.”

Hierneis, Theodor. The Monarch Dines. London: Werner Laurie, 1954.

Memories of a cook at the court of Ludwig of Bavaria. I am still trying to figure out why I was given this book on my twenty-first birthday! I do know that I took one look at the photo of the kitchen at Neuschwanstein, and at the one of the dining room at Schloss Linderhof, and knew I had to live in that kitchen or make a house like it. Pure Minoan arches and vaulted ceilings. Every anniversary of Ludwig’s last meal (before strolling out of the embrace of his valet into that of the lake) was celebrated in my restaurants.

Hirtzler, Victor. The Hotel St. Francis Cook Book. Chicago: Hotel Monthly Press, 1919.

Quite a modern book still. The “art of cooking developed in the hotel business, which, in America, now leads the world.” The book is organized with a breakfast, lunch, and dinner menu for each calendar day of the year with some recipes selected from each. The food is caught halfway between Europe and the United States, and is very schizophrenic about the choice of English or European languages to name the dishes. But nothing American is left out. There is no grip on the book’s own region of California yet, except for the oysters.

Holyfield, Dana. Swamp Cookin’ with the River People. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1999.

Like White Trash Cooking, this little book has a ring of truth, is hilarious, and I love the photographs of Louisiana swamp critters and how they are cooked outdoors.

Hom, Ken, and Pierre-Jean Pebeyre. Truffles. Paris: Hachette, 2001.

If anyone knows more about black truffles than the Pebeyre family of Périgord, I don’t know who it could be. And until you have cooked Ken’s tastou (truffle sandwiches) or the oeufs â la cocque, sauce truffe (soft-boiled eggs with black truffle sauce), you have not lived to the fullest. The photograph of Pierre-Jean’s grandfather Alain sniffing truffles through his long, white beard has been constantly on my kitchen or restaurant wall since my first days at Chez Panisse.

Hopkinson, Simon. Roast Chicken and Other Stories: Second Helpings. London: Macmillan, 2001.

Wonderful unpretentious essays by the chef who started Bibendum restaurant in London.

Huysmans, Joris-Karl. À Rebours. Paris: Fasquelle Éditeur, 1955.

An important book to understand the sensibility of the nineteenth-century fin de siècle and the world of Ritz and Escoffier. It is the book that, along with Rechy’s City of Night, ruined my twenties, as Gide’s Faux-Monnayeurs did my teens.

Jackson, Stanley. The Savoy. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1964.

You don’t have to have stayed in one of the Thames suites to appreciate the wonderfully English understated outrageousness of this book, and its social history of several eras.

Janson, Charles William. The Stranger in America. London: Albion Press, 1807.

All about the “genius, manners, and customs of the people of the United States,” written by a European. You get an idea of the view from the following excerpt (about an American woman in an English household) that “is truly characteristic of American politeness.” When asked to drink tea she replied: “Tea, indeed! No—I have drank [sic] none of that cursed stuff since the affair at Boston. I swallow a beef steak or a piece of fat pork for breakfast and supper, and wash it down with a quart of cider—that’s my way!” No Thomas Jefferson in that woman’s family!

The Joy of Truffles. Cologne: Evergreen Benedikt Taschen, 1998.

One of the most beautiful food books ever published. The photographs of food set the standard. The photo of the braised black truffle with sherry butter makes me want to dive into it.

Kaytor, Marilyn. “21”: The Life and Times of New York’s Favorite Club. New York: Viking Press, 1975.

The other book that made me think of creating the Stars concept. This is the book if you want to know the history of the first fifty years of the twentieth century in New York, and was there ever a more debonair restaurateur than Pete Kriendler?

Keenan, Brigid. Dior in Vogue. Foreword by Margot Fonteyn. New York: Harmony Books, 1981.

Look at Le Coudret, Christian Dior’s Mill House near Fontainebleau. The dining room and the photo of Dior, chicest of men, making raspberry liqueur in the kitchen of the same old mill house with his very un-chic dog Bobby. As for the mill: “There were white walls and dark beams, stone-flagged floors, simple furniture gleaming with the patina of age and care, big country cupboards smelling of lavender.” The unpretentious style of a gentle genius.

Keller, Thomas. The French Laundry Cookbook. New York: Artisan, 1999.

The book that raised the bar for chefs’ cookbooks to infinity. Stunningly beautiful, inspirational, and challenging for most.

Kennedy, Diana. The Cuisines of Mexico. New York: Harper & Row, 1972.

I bought this in 1974, and it still inspires me. The front flap says Kennedy is in the “tradition of Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson.” Personal, opinionated, and true. As a cookbook should be. See also the new books, including My Mexico.

Kettner’s Book of the Table. London: Dulan, 1877.

Because it is an inspirational book that believes that “[i]f the nature of the ingredients be well known, much fewer will do.” After many readings, never tired.

Knapik, Harold. Haute Cuisine Without Help. New York: Liveright, 1971.

A charming book by a friend of Alice B. Toklas, for whom he cooked. He wrote it to show that you don’t have to be French to cook superb food. Even in 1971 he wanted to tell the public about the horrors of canned anchovy filets, and the glories of salted whole ones. This is all about the origin and the quality of the ingredients. Read the bit about poached eggs.

Kuh, Patric. The Last Days of Haute Cuisine: America’s Culinary Revolution. New York: Viking Press, 2001.

Another look (and a very intelligent one) at the story of California Dish.

Lang, George. Nobody Knows the Truffles I Have Seen. New York: Knopf, 1999.

And I wonder how many know the huge achievements of George Lang and the contributions (see the Four Seasons, Restaurant Associates, and how we view catering in America today) of the amazing George. Read about it all here. As well as in other books.

Lanta, Anna Tasca. The Heart of Sicily. New York: Clarkson Potter, 1993.

Because surely in any cook’s heart there is a little or a lot of Sicily? I adore this book (see the photos of tomatoes drying in the sun and how it is really done), this family, and their Regaleali wines grown in the heart of Sicily.

La Varenne, Sieur de. Le Vray Cuisinier François. Amsterdam: Chez Pierre Mortíer, 1651 (Larousse).

This father of French cuisine started his career as chef by pimping for Henri IV, the king who wanted a chicken in every subject’s pot. My bible when I was a lad, Larousse Gastronomique, told me that La Varenne’s “recipes can be used today,” so I did. I used the raspberry vinegar recipe and later, at Stars, the squab cooked in it. (See Jeremiah Tower’s New American Classics).

Lawrence, R. de Treville, Sr. Jefferson and Wine. The Plains, VA: Vinifera Wine Growers Association, 1976.

Not just for Jefferson’s letter in 1787 to Chateau d’Yquem asking to buy some wine, or his wine-loving correspondence with my ancestor John Rutledge, but the one of two books that in 1976 made me think of American food, and of calling it “California,” in particular.

Le Duc. Crustacés, Poissons et Coquillages. Paris: Jean-Claude Lattes, 1977.

The book from the restaurant in Paris that changed the way we all looked at cooking fish. A big influence on me in 1977.

Leslie, Miss. Directions for Cookery in Its Various Branches. Philadelphia: Henry Carey Baird, 1853.

What this woman, writing with huge success (in sales) for other women who have to cook for their husbands, hates: “washy soup, poultry half raw, gravy unskimmed, and vegetables undrained; to say nothing of ponderous puddings, curdled custards tasting of nothing, and tough pastry.” Many of the professional cooks on line in the United States today don’t know about skimming sauces. And she knew then that bad food makes bad moods, and that only food cooked according to proper procedures is good for one’s health.

Lewis, Edna. The Taste of Country Cooking. New York: Knopf, 1976.

My copy is marked “From James Beard, August 1976.” After I read it, and after my California Dinner at Chez Panisse, I knew we were onto something emphasizing American food, as Jim had told me all along.

Machen, Arthur. Dog and Duck. New York: Knopf, 1924.

Because: “If a man talks to me of the sacred cause of Humanity, I lock up my few silver spoons.” And “But he who speaks well of port is, as the Greeks said of their best men, beautiful and good.”

McClure, Michael. Meat Science Essays. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1963.

This was a bible for me as a college freshman, thanks to my roommate, the poet Michael Palmer. A book “that may turn out to be a significant one for his generation. Its themes are suicide, death, revolt, sexuality & drugs, Artaud, Camus, and liberty”—all the things that obsessed me in the sixties, other than Escoffier’s Ma Cuisine and John Rechy’s City of Night. And for the essay on cocaine (so that the night it was introduced to Berkeley, on top of the low freezer in the kitchen of Chez Panisse, I was ready). And for the culinary chapter: “The Mushroom.”

Margittai, Tom, and Paul Kovi. The Four Seasons. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980.

“The ultimate book of food, wine, and elegant dining” is what the cover says, and certainly the restaurant is “one of the world’s great restaurants.” Read also the foreword by James Beard, who calls the restaurant “a gastronomic legend.” How true.

Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso. The Futurist Cookbook. Italy, 1932; London: Trefoil, 1989. Translation: Bedford Arts, San Francisco, 1989.

Because the New York chef David Burke proved Marinetti correct, probably without even knowing it: Tyrrhenian Seaweed Foam with Coral Garnish, for example. And Excitant Gastrique. And because the book is hilarious and vastly intelligent.

Matron, Fred J. Jean-Louis: Cooking with the Seasons. Charlottesville, VA: Thomasson-Grant, 1989.

The ultimate chefs’ photograph cookbook of its time, and one of the best and most influential of the last part of the American twentieth century. Having nothing to do with the seasons, but all about presentation, and style-setting presentation it is, a style that capped the eighties and sent the young nineties into a swoon. Thousands of up-and-coming chefs aspired to this cooking, with mixed results.

Marshall, A. B. The Book of Ice. London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, n.d. Another publication of his, The Table, was published in 1886.

Given to me by Elizabeth David, “a reminder of your summer with me in London 1978. With Love.” Because we both wondered whether the first household ice cream makers were in the United States or England. Read about cucumber ice cream, white coffee ice cream, and Spanish nut and cookies ice cream. All a hundred years before Ben & Jerry’s went public.

Médecin, Jacques. La Cuisine du Comte de Nice. Paris: Juillard, 1972.

Given to me by Alice in early 1974, this, Elizabeth David, and (for me) Richard Olney were the books that formed Chez Panisse until I decided to take it truly regional in 1976. A book that influenced a lot of people, many of whom went “Mediterranean.”

Menon. La Cuisinière Bourgeoise. Paris: Guillyn, 1746.

One of the great cookbooks of all time, as both Richard Olney and Elizabeth David told me over and over again until I read it: “Simple dishes, good ones, and new ones, for which I have given easily understandable instructions.” And a book that was one of the first to write about women’s cooking in the home.

Montagné, Prosper. La Grand Livre de La Cuisine. Paris: Flammarion, 1929.

A beautiful monster of a book, with Philéas Gilbert (partner with Escoffier in Le Guide Culinaire) doing a preface, and Henri Béraud’s look at the future that would suggest the pot-au-feu had hyperbolic magic mushrooms in it. Read it for the lunch menu of February 2, 1926, the centenary of Brillat-Savarin. It is the menu that Béraud regretted “all his life that he had not assisted at its preparation.” I now regret not having been there. And what an extraordinary modern menu it is, considering how mad they could have gone, being that close to the previous century: “Rissoles of foie gras and sausages cooked in Chablis for hors d’oeuvre, Beaujolais for aperitif; an ‘omelet du Cure’ with La Mission Haut-Brion; stewed eels in a coulis of crayfish, Cheval Blanc; a truffled turkey, Côte de Nuits of Bouchard; Salade de l’émigré; Cheeses, another Bouchard Reserve; pyramids of meringue with vanilla ice cream flavoured with rose petals, Heidsieck and Pol Roger; Fruit, coffee, cognac, liqueurs.” Now that’s a lunch!

. Larousse Gastronomique: The Encyclopedia of Food, Wine, and Cookery. Introduction by Auguste Escoffier and Philéas Gilbert. Edited by Charlotte Turgeon and Nina Froud. New York: Crown, 1961.

Get started on this translation, then buy the earlier French editions for all the edited-out details in the English-language editions. The book other than Escoffier’s Ma Cuisine that I read ceaselessly in college.

Morris, Helen. Portrait of a Chef: The Life of Alexis Soyer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1938.

As a model chef “Soyer was vain, a poseur, a fop, an eccentric, a brilliant inventor, and a magnificent organizer.” He was the “lie that tells the truth.” And he designed the vast kitchens of the Reform Club. And he once fed twenty-two thousand poor people Christmas dinner for free. Anyone who thinks he or she is a grand chef should read this book first.

Nignon, Édouard. Eloges de la Cuisine Française. Paris: Édition d’Art H. Piazza, 1933.

A true Scorpio, and slightly mad. And a brilliant foreword by Sacha Guitry that I have quoted often. Read also Nignon’s Les Plaisirs de La Table (Paris: Jacoub & Aulard, 1930), which is truly a pleasure. No one has more fun than Nignon. Also because if you look under the bed of any of the most famous chefs since 1960 (at least literate ones), you will find one of Nignon’s books. Nignon was chef at Paillard in Paris, then at Claridge’s in London.

O’Donnell, Mietta, and Tony Knox. Great Australian Chefs. Sydney: Bookman Press, 1999.

If you had any doubt that the culinary revolution moved to Australia after California, before moving on to England, this book will convince you.

Olney, Richard. The French Menu Cookbook. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970.

Because it was dedicated to Georges Garin, the inspiration, if an irascible one, for the Young Turks of the seventies in France. As in vegetable purees. And because when I read this book when it came out in 1970, I began a correspondence with Richard, and it was my personal (not the official) bible when I started at Chez Panisse.

. Simple French Food. New York: Atheneum, 1975.

Not just because my book is inscribed “For adorable Jeremiah,” but because when Richard told me he was going to write it, I said we would have to do a two-week festival of the dishes at Chez Panisse to introduce him and his food to California.

. Yquem. Paris: Flammarion, 1985.

Because it is fascinating to see the menus from 1867 to 1985 that have served this famous wine, including the one I did at Chez Panisse in 1975, “An American Menu,” with only Sauternes served with the food. The pairing of rich roast beef with d’Yquem came from Prince Yusupov (the one who assassinated Rasputin) as told to me by the mentors of my teens, Count Cheremetev and my Russian uncle.

Orwell, George. Down and Out in London and Paris. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1933.

For anyone interested in working in the restaurant business, this book is a must, before reading its pupil, Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain.

Pellaprat, Jean-Henri. L’Art Culinaire Moderne. Castagnola, Switzerland: Jacques Kramer, 1956. English translation as The Great Book of French Cuisine. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1966.

That is exactly it: a great book. What it was like to eat at Maxim’s, if you don’t have their book.

. The Great Book of French Cuisine. Jeremiah Tower translation. New York: Vendome Press, 2003.

The iTunes preview says; “Henri-Paul Pellaprat and Jeremiah Tower, master chefs of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, have created a reference cookbook that will shape great chefs and great cooking in the twenty-first century.” An exaggeration of me, but not of Henri-Paul. But I did go through two thousand recipes and rewrite them. As well as removed all the 1960s American home economics rubbish from the book.

Pépin, Jacques. Complete Techniques. New York: Black Dog & Levanthal, 2001.

A compilation of the brilliant how-to photographs of La Technique (1976) and La Méthode (1979) that helped me through so much in the kitchen, since I was never taught professionally, and when I started at Chez Panisse, there wasn’t anyone else who was either. Thank you, Jacques.

Peterson, James. Sauces. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1991.

The first person after Escoffier’s introduction to stocks and sauces to get it right—perfectly. A book that I wish I had written.

Petits Propos Culinaires. Edited by the Davidsons. London: Prospect Books, 1979–.

A wonderfully mad and fascinating little collection of books, and in this first edition Nathan d’Aulnay (Richard Olney) and I printed recipes for use in the Time-Life Good Cook series. Elizabeth David was intrigued and did “Hunt the Ice Cream,” the wonderful Elizabeth Lambert Ortiz did “Coriander,” and in later editions, like No. 26 in 1987, the booklets were already looking at Australia, with the visionary “Symposium of Australian Gastronomy.”

Picture Cook Book. New York: Time, 1958.

Full-on 1950s. Look at page 119: The shoes are more beautiful than the food, not to happen again until the nineties and Manolo Blahnik! And page 154, the clothes at the barbecue! Then look at the restaurant section and see the food of Fernand Point (see below), the photograph and food of the great Alexandre Dumaine at the Hôtel de la Côte-d’Or in Saulieu (see above), and Ernie’s in San Francisco, just to see the very spooky photo of the chef Ermete Lavino, who is the identical twin to the Ernie’s chef of thirty years later, Jackie Robert. Yes, this book is a treasure of the mouth-hanging-open-in-wonderment variety.

Point, Fernand. Ma Gastronomie. Wilton, CT: Lyceum Books, 1974.

You have to love a man who drank a magnum of champagne while being shaved, and who was the culinary father to Paul Bocuse and a host of other Young Turks, like Thomas Keller in Napa, and Tony Bilson in Sydney. And was other book I was supposed to look at when I was hired at Chez Panisse. See in this book.

Pollan, Michael. The Botany of Desire. New York: Random House, 2001.

A book on apples, potatoes, marijuana, and tulips that reads like a thriller. A perfect book.

Pomiane, Édouard de. Cooking with Pomiane. Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1976.

One of Elizabeth David’s favorites, and one she told me to read for writing the Chez Panisse menus. And because he had a radio show on food in the 1930s, as well as tried to teach the French to eat the way we do now: with health in mind, but without sacrificing great flavors and meals.

. French Cooking in Ten Minutes. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1977.

No wonder Elizabeth David adored him, and here for the simplicity and ease of recipes. Who says you can’t put together a meal in your little apartment!

Practical Housekeeping: A Careful Compilation of Tried and Approved Recipes. Wilton, Ohio, 1876.

This is the mother of all housewives’ companions, dedicated to the “Plucky Housewives of 1876, who master their work instead of allowing it to master them.” The material later (1883) became Buckeye Cookery, which was reprinted by Dover.

Ramsay, Gordon. Passion for Flavor. London: Conran Octopus, 1996.

The foreword is by Guy Savoy, the French chef we Americans trounced in 1983 in Newport in front of one hundred U.S. food journalists. Another book after the school of Marco Pierre White, a very nice book to cook from, and a new “cuisine Légère” all over again. Richard Olney liked Gordon’s restaurant Aubergine, though perhaps not for the cappuccino soup presentation. Or before he became a clown instead of an inspirational chef.

Ranhofer, Charles. The Epicurean. New York: Dover, 1971.

By the chef at the great Delmonico’s in New York (this material is from 1862 to 1894). A book I bought in February 1974, but the bell did not go off in my head until two years later; when reading it again, I saw that all the menus used English words and terms, and I saw the dishes inspired by California (the corn soup from Mendocino) and immediately wrote the California Regional Dinner, which started a revolution.

Rann, Evelyn. After the Theatre Lunch. [Minneapolis]: Buzza Company, [1930s].

This little pamphlet book has a beautiful and charming late Deco design that could easily be the inspiration for David Lance Goines, of Chez Panisse poster fame. The written material is straightforward with a lot of American class.

Rawlings, Majorie Kinnan. Cross Creek Cookery. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942.

One of the ultimately American cookbooks, and it inspired me to do a Florida Regional Dinner at the Santa Fe Bar & Grill in 1982. When I was asked, “Is this Floridian cuisine?” I answered, “It should be.” Rawlings gives the recipe for the divine Black Bottom Pie.

Ray, Cyril, ed. The Gourmet’s Companion. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1963.

About all the greats in the very intelligent prose of the first part of the twentieth century. From Virginia Woolf, André Simon, Elizabeth David, Pilaff Bey (Norman Douglas), E. M. Forster, Hilaire Beloc (“His sins were scarlet, but his books were read”), and the like.

Rector, George. The Rector Cookbook. Chicago: Rector, 1928.

The only nonliving restaurant other than Delmonico’s that was a model for Stars of San Francisco: “Rector’s was the supreme court of triviality, where who’s who went to learn what’s what.” The customers were “champions, challengers, opera stars, explorers, captains of industry, and lieutenants of sloth; gamblers, authors, and adventurers, [and] all celebrated their temporary successes with a night at Rector’s.” The book has very American food at its best. The European heritage was there, but it was worked over into a new image and taste. My grandmother’s favorite book—for her cook.

Reynière, Grìmod de la. Almanach des Gourmands. 8 vols. Paris: Chez Maradan, 1803–12.

The first book that Richard Olney told me in 1973 to buy and, with my first spare money from Chez Panisse, I did. Four of them. Wonderful, brilliant, and an inspiration to many great chefs and writers (see Lucien Tendret).

Ripert, Eric, and Michael Ruhlman. A Return to Cooking. New York: Artisan, 2002.

The first chefs’ cookbook that measures up visually after Thomas Keller’s book, The French Laundry Cookbook, and surpasses it in usability by the home cook. One is swept along by the personal passion of Eric and his rediscoveries.

Ritz, Marie Louise. César Ritz. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1938.

Because whatever ideas you have about perfectionism will forever change after you have read about this genius’s work habits. Mine did.

Rodriguez-Hunter, Suzane. Found Meeds of the Lost Generation: Recipes and Anecdotes from 1920’s Paris. Winchester, MA: Faber & Faber, 1994.

Hilarious, adorable. and a must for anyone who wonders how greats gave great parties to without a lot of money. Or with.

Roman, Philippe. Cochon: Rimailles et Ripailles. Paris: Jean-Paul Rocher, 2003

As elegant a little book as you will ever find if you like poetry on how to feast on pig.

Rombauer, Irma S., and Marion Rombauer Becker. Joy of Cooking. Indianapolis and New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1975.

One of the greatest cookbooks ever. Originally published in 1931, it now makes later editions of Fannie Farmer look like Mobil guides. If you had to have one cookbook, this could be it. See Bittman.

Root, Waverley. Food: An Authoritative and Visual History and Dictionary of the Foods of the World. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980.

My favorite dictionary of food, along with Alexandre Dumas’s and Alan Davidson’s two hundred years later. See also The Food of France and The Food of Italy.

Sackville-West, Vita. V. Sackville-West’s Garden Book. London: Michael Joseph, 1968.

Because Alice Waters gave it to me on May 7,1974, thinking that this was what I was talking about as I was pushing starting a farm of our own. Obviously she had never seen Sissinghurst, where my mother used to take me to teach me gardening, or known about the inherited fortune that maintained it. In California we ended up with lettuce and a few geese.

Saffron, Inga. Caviar. New York: Broadway Books, 2002.

Subtitled “The Strange History and Uncertain Future of the World’s Most Coveted Delicacy.” So read it and eat it while you can.

Saint-Ange, Madame E. La Bonne Cuisine. Paris: Larousse, 1927.

Because she is a cult. Decide for yourself if it is by 1927 “the most practical cookery book in the French language” (Elizabeth David) or not. It is certainly more practical for the home cook than Escoffier’s Guide Culinaire, and it’s one of the first cookbooks truly in love with precision. It is interesting that Elizabeth adored this book, since her books are anything but precise from the point of view of anyone but a natural cook.

Sanger, Marjory Bartlett. Escoffìer. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1976.

One of the best books about the Man.

Sarris, Stan, and Rodney Adler. Banc. Sydney: New Holland, 1999.

An Australian version of the “day in the life” of a restaurant, beautifully photographed, and with good recipes of food and drink.

Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.

“The dark side of the American meal.” A view of what is wrong with modern America through what it eats. Brillat-Savarin’s “you are what you eat” comes horrifyingly true.

Schofield, Leo. “California Cuisine.” Australian Gourmet, April 1986.

Sometimes it takes an outsider to see what’s going on. What is truth and what is myth. Leo is a giant in this. An elegant man.

Schuman, Charles. American Bar. New York: Abbeville Press, 1995.

After the Savoy Cocktail Book, and on a par. One of the best books on bartending and drinks.

Serventi, Silvano. La Grande Histoire du Foie Gras. Paris: Flammarion, 1993.

An exceptionally beautiful book, superbly done, and with it and Michael Ginor’s book, you have the whole foie, as it were.

Simon, André. A Concise Encyclopaedia of Gastronomy. London: Wine and Food Society, 1940–48.

Brilliantly told and organized by category, like “Fish” and “Meat.” On buying fish: “Look at the fish, it tells its own tale.” The section on “Ham” is the best on the subject I have ever seen.

. A Flummery of Food: Feasts for Epicures. London: Little Books, 2004.

A color-illustrated pocket book with Simon’s choice of writers and their articles that are as charming as his own.

Sitwell, Edith. English Eccentrics. London: Penguin Books, 1971.

How could you have an informed sense of humor about the twentieth century if you have not read this? Or feel so well about how much you drink? Not as much, one would hope, or as colorfully, as Squire Mad Jack Mytton, who drank eight bottles of port a day, and his horse, Baronet, not much less. He spent half a million (tens of millions today) doing it, and set fire to his nightshirt to cure the hiccups. A barrel of fun, as it were.

Slater, Nigel. Appetite. New York: Clarkson Potter, 2000.

Subtitled “So What Do You Want to Eat Today.” This book will always answer that question that never ends. Nigel is a genius.

Smith, Delia. Delia’s How to Cook. London: BBC, 1998.

A friend of mine in London said of Delia that all her recipes always work. If you are interested in basics, Delia’s television shows and books are the ones to watch and cook from. She is the doyenne of British cooking.

Solomon, Charmaine. Encyclopaedia of Asian Food. Boston: Periplus Editions, 1998.

Exhaustive and fascinating. Charmaine has always known the most from a Western perspective, and she was one of the first to know.

Spoeri, Daniel. The Mythological Travels. New York: Something Else Press, 1970.

Magic mushroom surrealism unsurpassed.

Steingarten, Jeffrey. “Meals of the Millennium.” Vogue, November 1999.

Because this, and anything Jeffrey writes, is worth reading.

Stout, Rex. The Nero Wolfe Cookbook. New York: Viking Press, 1973.

The Nero Wolfe mysteries were some of the first books I read that made me want to cook, and here are the recipes.

. Too Many Cooks. New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1938. Reprinted New York: Bantam, 1983.

Because in 1970 I read it again and listed the wonderful food in praise of America: Creole Tripe from New Orleans; Missouri Boone County Ham—cooked with vinegar, molasses, Worcestershire sauce, cider, and herbs; Chicken in Curdled Egg Sauce—almonds, sherry, Mexican sausage; Tennessee Opossum; and Philadelphia Snapper Soup. See previous entry.

Szathmary, Louis, advisory ed. Cookery Americana. New York: Arno Press, 1973.

A series of twenty-seven cookbooks, including Fifty Years of Prairie Cooking, that “chronicles a fascinating aspect of American social life over the past 150 years.” Truly an insight into what we have lost in the menu since the First and Second World Wars. Most of the household management and church societies material that fills these books is not “cottage cheese omelet” and “rinkum tiddy.”

Talleyrand, Charles-Maurice.

Anything on the lifestyle of this great diner is worth reading. A man who continued, because of a complete lack of scruples, to eat famously well throughout the people’s revolution against excess, and lived through all the next royalist, imperial, and populist regimes. After all, his chef was Antonin Carême, one of the greatest chefs of all time, and mentor to Escoffier as well as Dubois and so on. And because Talleyrand was the first to figure out that entertaining should be tax deductible.

Tendret, Lucien. La Table au Pays de Brillat-Savarin. Mâcon: Protat Frères, 1892.

“A small masterpiece,” Richard Olney calls it. This book inspired many, like the legendary Alexandre Dumaine, the greatest chef in France in the mid-twentieth century. The famous Poularde au Vapeur is from Tendret, going from Dumaine on to Fernand Point and his pupil Bocuse. The Aga Khan would go to France just to dine on this sublime chicken at Dumaine’s.

Tïrel, Guillaume (Taillevent). Le Viandier. Paris, 1373–80; Paris: Pichon and Vicaire, 1892. .

Tirel was the head cook to French dukes and to Charles VI. Read this if for no other reason than that this collection of manuscripts is the first French cookbook, and to learn to cook with almonds, and for the miracles of verjus in cold soups thickened with almonds. Oeufs de Truite (trout eggs) not bad either.

Toklas, Alice B. The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book. 1954; New York: Anchor Books, 1960.

A book “of character, fine food, and tasty human observation,” according to Janet Flanner (American journalist in Paris). The book that I cooked from endlessly in college, and then afterward cooked from for the Gertrude Stein dinner at Chez Panisse. Try the Eggs Francis Picabia, but the most food-splashed page is for “A Tender Tart,” everyone’s favorite kind.

Toulouse-Lautrec. Chez Maxim’s. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962.

Alice Waters’s favorite book, and looking at the photo of the countess in her fifties mink entering Maxim’s to greet the owner, Louis Vaudable, you will know why. For the lovers of chicken “in half mourning,” this is it. And because, with the Baron de Ladoucette, I had one of the best meals ever at Maxim’s.

Tower, Jeremiah. America’s Best Chefs Cook with Jeremiah Tower. Companion to the PBS Series. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2003.

. “Crowned with Roses—A Four Second Perfume.” Unpublished, 1972.

“Memoirs of a Harvard Graduate, 1961 to 1972.” In the introduction I wrote, “I will speak, like Arthur Machen, of certain tastes. But unlike he, who dared retribution by admitting a Germanic liking for apple sauce with his roast goose when nationalism made such an admission risky, I will dwell on a revival, and so avoid the ire of all but the most dull.”

. A Dash of Genius. Amazon Kindle Single, 2014.

My book on Auguste Escoffier.

. Jeremiah Tower’s New American Classics. New York: Harper & Row, 1986.

My first cookbook. James Beard Foundation winner.

. Jeremiah Tower Cooks: 250 Recipes from an American Master. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2003

Troisgros, Jean, and Pierre Troisgros. Cuisiniers à Roane. Paris: Robert Laffont, 1977.

The other book that changed my and other American chefs’ views of cooking and presentation of their food. See Michel Guérard.

Trotter, Charlie. Meat and Game. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2001.

I mention this one to remind you to look at the whole series of Charlie’s restaurant cookbooks.

Tsuji, Shizuo. Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art. New York: Kodansha International, 1980.

The first book that we saw in America to set down the art of this cooking and still influential.

Villas, James. American Taste: A Celebration of Gastronomy Coast to Coast. Foreword by James Beard. New York: Arbor House, 1982.

Because when I was planning the Celebration of American Chefs for 1983 as the first big function of the AIWF, this book was the inspiration to make me insist, against the pressure of New York and Los Angeles chefs, that we find chefs from all over the land. And because James Villas is the writer who champions simple American food, and knows more about it than anyone. See below.

. “From Our Abundant Land: At Last, a Table of Our Own.” Town & Country, June 1976.

Read also Villas’s At Table: A Passion for Food and Drink (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), and Between Bites (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2002). All Villas’s books are fascinating, impeccably written, and historically important.

Visser, Margaret. The Rituals of Dinner. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991.

A book on the “origins, evolution, eccentricities, and meaning of table manners.” Fascinating. How and why we eat together.

Warne, Frederick, & Co. Every-Day Cookery: For Families of Moderate Income.

Covent Garden, London, c. 1900.

This extraordinary little book, of only 150 pages, by a publisher who did “useful books,” “model manuals,” and so on, sold this for one shilling and actually thought that roast partridge on a platter with its garnish of vegetables, or a whole turbot, was for moderate income (in those days, chicken was the luxury poultry). Read this delightful book and see why Elizabeth David adored it so, how it formed her style, and why she gave it to me.

Warner, Richard. Antiquitates Culinariae; Or Curious Tracts Relating to the Culinary Affairs of the Old English. London: R. Blamire, 1791; reprint, London: Prospect Books, 1981.

Because it includes The Forme of Cury, thought by most to be the finest of the old English cookbooks: “a roll of ancient English cookery, compiled about 1390, by the master cooks of Richard II.” Read it now, eat the latest and best food in London now in places like St. John’s, and remember this fourteenth century.

Wechsberg, Joseph. “Brillat-Savarin.” Gourmet, March 1970.

Thank God someone has some objectivity about this god of gourmets. And because anything by Wechsberg is worth reading. See also his charming Blue Trout and Black Truffles (New York: Knopf, 1966).

White, Marco Pierre. White Heat. London: Pyramid Books, 1990.

A visionary book (as you can tell by the countless imitations after it was published) that set the style for a “day in the life of a restaurant” and the handheld camera that is part of the action of the restaurant.

Wolfe, Linda. The Literary Gourmet. New York: Random House, 1962.

Because this book is beautiful and really fun to read, and because The Four Seasons restaurant tested the recipes. Appropriately, since its “imaginative modern cuisine is based on the best achievements of the past” and “brings these historic recipes once again to life.” Tripe from Shakespeare, crayfish soufflé from Gogol, crème au chocolate ice cream from Dumas, suckling pig and kasha from Chekhov, velvet cakes—naturally—from Wilde, and for the dinner at the chateau of the Marquis de Vaubyessard. The one to which Emma Bovary goes. “One of the most seductive dinner parties in literature,” the perfumes of the flowers and of the fine linen, the fumes of the viands, and the odor of truffles all enveloping Emma as she enters the dining room.

Woolf, Virginia. Orlando. London: Hogarth Press, 1928.

The dinner Orlando did at the embassy in Constantinople at the end of the great fast of Ramadan: “gold plate . . . candelabras . . . negroes in plush breeches . . . pyramids of ice . . . fountains of negus . . . jellies made to represent His Majesty’s ships . . . birds in golden cages . . . gentlemen in slashed crimson velvet . . . oceans to drink,” and so on. The 1978 Orlando dinner was the last that I ever cooked at Chez Panisse.

Zachs, Richard. History Laid Bare: Love, Sex, and Perversity from the Ancient Etruscans to Warren G. Harding. New York: Harper Perennial, 1995.

If you want to know what other things other people have also and always eaten, read this and wonder. And laugh.