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The Alice B Toklas Cookbook

by Alice B. Toklas

says

Acclaimed food critic Alice Toklas composed much of this kitchen-themed memoir, which raised eyebrows for a hashish fudge recipe, while ridden with hepatitis. In it, she remembers a beloved childhood cook via fritters, while a meal with Picasso is recalled through a bass dish, yoking recipes to major players in her eventful life.

from the publisher

The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook is one of the very few books that genuinely deserves the label ‘legendary’. . . . fruit of hundreds of hours in the kitchen, market-place, and vegetable-garden, this gloriously entertaining culinary companion ranges from inventive response to wartime austerity to French bourgeois cooking at its richest and best. Always delicious, the recipes vary from simple snacks. . . .to elaborate dishes…

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Original Publisher
Doubleday Books
Date of publication
1954
ISBN
0061995363

Features & Stories

A route through ckbk’s French cookbook collection

A route through ckbk’s French cookbook collection

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Recommended by

Frances Bissell

Food writer

Serif's 1994 edition is a more attractive book than the 1984 Harper & Row US Edition –although I should declare an interest here. The late and much missed Stephen Hayward of Serif Books published my books on floral cooking which, like the Toklas, were also designed by Pentagram. The contents are as delightful as the cover is elegant, with a fine sense of time and place, of France before and during the Second World War, and some serious name dropping, describing kitchen suppers for Picasso.

Joanne Hendricks

Owner of Joanne Hendricks Cookbooks

An observation of life & entertaining during WW1 & 2 in Europe of the circle of the now famous writers & artists. with recipes, minus the famous 'haschich fudge, under 'Desserts Cold' in the Index of Recipes that was included in the 1st London edition published by Michael Joseph, in the same year as the US edition.

Oliver Rowe

Chef

I’m not sure I’ve ever actually cooked from this book, but its quirky nature and the sense that it provides a snapshot of a time that although faded, we still feel in our bones, make it unique and special in the culinary canon.

Marlena Spieler

Food writer and broadcaster

Her stories, her time era, her enthusiasm for food, her kitchen life and tales.

Glynn Christian

Food writer and author

Killian Fox

Founder and editor of The Gannet

Ruth Rogers

American born British Chef who owns and runs the Michelin Star Italian restaurant, The River Cafe

Ursula Heinzelmann

Food and wine writer, Director of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery

Tamar Adler

Food writer