La Bonne Cuisine de Madame E. Saint-Ange: The Original Companion for French Home Cooking
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La Bonne Cuisine de Madame E. Saint-Ange: The Original Companion for French Home Cooking
by Madame Evelyn Saint-Ange and Paul Aratow
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55 of 59 people found the following review helpful:
The classic French home cooking book, November 1, 2005
Reviewer:David A. Heintz "designdog" (Richmond, VA USA) -
This cannot be an objective review. I learned to cook from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, as did many. When I discovered that Julia Child relied on another book, by a French woman and published in 1927, I had to have a copy. La Bonne Cuisine de Madame E. St-Ange has remained on my countertop for over twenty years. Not that I have cooked much from it. My French is poor enough that translating was a chore, and I have dozens (hundreds?) of perfectly fine French cookbooks in English at hand. But this one book remained. Mr. Aratow's translation was long in the making: my Amazon order was open almost two years. It is worth the wait. He has lovingly, and I believe, faithfully rendered the words of Madame, finally offering them up to me and fulfilling the allure that this book has held all these years. The French have four basic types of cookery: La haute cuisine: as you would find in a starred restaurant (mostly by men.) La cuisine regionale: featuring the local ingredients of a province. La cuisine impromptue: what we Americans digest most nights. La cuisine bourgeoise: the cooking - real cooking - of the household (mostly by women.) La Bonne Cuisine is the touchstone of the latter. This is not to say that you will learn to cook la cuisine bourgeoise from this book. It is not for a beginner. It presumes that one has the basic cooking skills of a Frenchwoman in the late 1920's. One knows how to roast a chicken, for example. (This is only done on a spit, according to Madame. Note that our ovens do not have a control labeled "roast", but "bake.") Also, in the pervasive "Wall-Marting" of American grocery shopping, many ingredients will not be available. No. This is a book that will make a good cook a much better cook. I have always thought that cooking, French cooking in particular, is not so much about the results but about the process - and its links with the past. We can cook and, like Proust's Madeleine, experience something of a bygone time, a past that we could not have experienced firsthand, thanks to Madame's La Bonne Cuisine, and Paul Aratow's translation. And the results will be quite tasty, believe me. Just keep a copy of an "Americanized" French cook book handy, say the much-underappreciated Glorious French Food by James Peterson. The marriage of his technical expertise and Madame's wisdom will make you a great home cook. Just look for the ingredients! Some curiosities: my copy of the book is 786 pages, exactly. Not the 1392 pages claimed here. Also, there is no recipe for coq a vin, a ubiquitous staple of the French home menu. This I do not understand.
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Translated into English for the first time since its original 1927 publication, La Bonne Cuisine has long been the French housewife's equivalent of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook or The Joy of Cooking—a trusted and comprehensive guide to "la cuisine bourgeoise" or home cooking, rather than the haute cuisine of chefs and Escoffier. Julia Child called LBC "one of my bibles" and drew heavily upon its detailed approach to preparation as she labored on her own classic Mastering the art of French Cooking. Aratow has retained the book's exhaustive scope and delightfully imperious Gallic tone ("The only true roast is a roast cooked on a spit"). The result is a comprehensive if old-fashioned tome that is an excellent basic guide to techniques, equipment and every staple of the French repertoire, from Sauce Velouté and Fricassée de Poulet to Crème Caramel. Francophiles and food history buffs will thrill to see the legendary book in its entirety, complete with original illustrations, though few modern cooks still need guidelines for lighting the firebox of a cast-iron coal-fired stove or plucking and flaming a fresh-killed chicken. A more detailed apparatus of notes on modernization would've made the book more user-friendly. As it stands, this magisterial translation offers a window into a bygone moment in French life and is a testament to the enduring joy of cooking with cookbooks. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
I lived in Paris in the 1960s, when the food market, Les Halles, "the stomach of Paris," was still the center of the city. Read the first page
Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
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regular simmer, scant deciliter, very firm snow, frying basin, good kilogram, small lardons, fine drum sieve, parchment paper right, horsehair drum sieve, lining dough, braising white meats, good boiled milk, round heated plate, veal foot, simple simmer, very gentle oven, stainless steel drum sieve, very moderate oven, mousseline brioche, sauce brune, heated vegetable dish, cooking liquid from mushrooms, light blond roux, veal jus, good centimeter
Capitalized Phrases (CAPs):
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Filet de Boeuf, Foie de Veau, Oeufs Farcis, Entremets Chaud, Haricots Verts, Ris de Veau, Sauce Mayonnaise, Sauce Tomate, Vin Blanc, Oeufs Durs, Oeufs Mollets, Pieds de Mouton, Urbain Dubois, Chou Rouge, Choux de Bruxelles, Compote de Poires, Gigot de Mouton, Haricots Blancs Frais, Lentil Soup, Pork Chops, Rich Mushroom Sauce, Rognons de Mouton, Tranches de Saumon, Vin Rouge, Compote de Cerises
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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