by Scott Ferguson
Imagine having a large manuscript for a French cookbook land on your desk in an era when no one was really interested in French cooking as the French do it. Also imagine that it was written by three unknowns. That's the position Judith Jones found herself in, in the summer of 1959. In what seemed to be a daring move at the time, she bought the book and published it. The rest, as the saying goes, is history. That book was Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and the three unknowns were Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck. With its publication, both cooking and cookbook publishing in America were transformed.
But that is not the only cooking story in Jones's long career. As you read this memoir, you'll encounter many on the great names of modern cooking—both American and international. Hers is a life that includes James Beard, Claudia Roden, Madhur Jaffrey, Irene Kuo, Lidia Bastianich, Edna Lewis, Marion Cunningham, Joan Nathan, and M.F.K Fisher. (She was also responsible for publishing Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, but that is a story outside the one she tells here.)
As if editing some of the greats were not enough, she has also coauthored The Book of Bread, The Book of New New England Cookery, and The L.L. Bean Game and Fish Cookbook.
This all adds up to quite a compelling "life in food."
With this career background, you can be assured that Jones is very much able to write, and to write beautifully. Here's a section from her recollections of Julia Child:
(S)he did not suffer fools gladly. She chided me when I suggested that home cooks might object to the number of bowls and pots and pans she called for (all of which someone had to clean up). "You'll never be a good cook if you worry about that," she admonished. And she always resisted giving in to the flimsies, as she called the non-serious cook. Once, I told her about a man who late in life took a cooking class for beginners. He complained to the teacher, Marion Cunningham (our latter-day Fannie Farmer), that recipe directions seemed so baffling. For example, he wasn't certain what it meant 'to toss the onions into the pan.' So he decided to position the pan on the other side of his kitchen and toss the onions into it, figuring that they were supposed to be aerated as they sailed through the air. When Julia heard that, she howled in derision and said: "Don't ever let that man into a kitchen again."
Since food and recipes play such an important part in Jones's life, it is not really a surprise to find a generous lagniappe of recipes included. They are broken into four sections: "From the Past" (with such dishes as Shepherd's Pie and Bread Pudding), "French—and Other—Influences" (including Boudin Blanc and Sweetbreads Sauteed with Morels and Cream), "A Taste of Bryn Teg" (Milkweed Pods Fried in Beer Batter and Goosebury Flummery), and at last, "Cooking for One" (Jim Beard's Swordfish-Olive Pasta and Lamb Croquettes).
So here it is, to savor almost as a fine wine, 60 years of food, food writing, and the people who changed the way Americans think about food, eat and, indeed, live.
(In case you're wondering about that tenth muse, here's the list she gives us:
- Poetry: Calliope
- History: Clio
- Music: Euterpe
- Dance: Terpsichore
- Love Poetry: Erato
- Tragedy: Melpomene
- Comedy: Thalia
- Geometry: Polyhymnia
- Astronomy: Urania
And, in the words of Brillat-Savarin, Gastera is the tenth muse. She presides over all the pleasures of taste.)
Recipes from The Tenth Muse:
Scrafft's Butterscotch Cookies
Frozen Maple Mousse
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