Roy Andries de Groot (1910–1983) was “the best of the elegant food writers” in a backhanded description by John and Karen Hess. Despite a frequent focus on European subjects, he remains a major influence on American restaurant cuisine because of his holistic view of fine food as derived from skillful and seasonal marketing and warmth at the table as well as kitchen technique. He also wrote very well on technique, producing the clearest summaries of French nouvelle cuisine (Revolutionizing French Cooking, 1976), the best of the early food-processor cookbooks, and an attempt to revive the pressure cooker with a 1978 book. Almost of all of his culinary writing was produced in a fifteen-year period in his middle age when he wrote eight books and innumerable magazine articles for major magazines.
