Volume 29, Number 2 · February 18, 1982
The Flight of the Bumble Bee
By Diane Johnson
BOOKS REVIEWED IN THIS ARTICLE
The New American Cuisine
by the editors of Metropolitan Home
Harmony Books, 381 pp., $27.50
The Elegance with Ease Cookbook
by Fern Lebo
Hammond (Maplewood, New Jersey), 175 pp., $5.95 (paper)
Discover Brunch: A New Way of Entertaining
by Ruth Macpherson
Hammond, 160 pp., $6.95 (paper)
Cooking with Carrier
by Robert Carrier
A & W, 184 pp., $19.95
Robert Carrier's Entertaining
A & W, 222 pp., $16.95; $10.95 (paper)
Too Busy to Cook?
Bon Appetit magazine
Knapp (Los Angeles), 216 pp., $19.95
The New York Times More 60-Minute Gourmet
by Pierre Franey
Times Books, 296 pp., $12.95
Fifteen-Minute Meals
by Emalee Chapman
101 Productions (San Francisco), 168 pp., $6.95 (paper)
The New James Beard
by James Beard
Knopf, 625 pp., $16.95
The Park Avenue Cookbook
by Sara Stamm
Doubleday, 262 pp., $19.95
The Helen Corbitt Collection
edited by Elizabeth Ann Johnson
Houghton Mifflin, 508 pp., $25.00
Pamela Harlech's Practical Guide to Cooking, Entertaining & Household Management
Atheneum, 436 pp., $16.95
The Only Texas Cookbook
by Linda West Eckhardt
Texas Monthly Press, 284 pp., $15.95
The World's Best Food for Health and Long Life
by Michael Bateman, by Caroline Conran, by Oliver Gillie
Houghton Mifflin, 246 pp., $19.95
Kitchen in the Hills: The Hovel Cookbook
by Elizabeth West
Faber, 184 pp., $16.95
The Microwave Chinese Cookbook
by Lillian Chen, by Edith Nobile
Van Nostrand Reinhold, 157 pp., $10.95
Cookbook from a Melting Pot
An E. Paulucci Book, by Elizabeth Paulucci
Grosset & Dunlap, 288 pp., $11.95
The Nouvelle Cuisine Cookbook
by Armand Aulicino
Grosset & Dunlap, 295 pp., $7.95 (paper)
The French Cuisine of Your Choice
by Isabelle Marique, by Albert Jorant
Harper & Row, 356 pp., $16.75
Kitchen Science: A Compendium of Essential Information for Every Cook
by Howard Hillman
Houghton Mifflin, 263 pp., $11.95
Chinese Technique
by Ken Hom, by Harvey Steiman
Simon & Schuster, 345 pp., $16.95
Cooking Techniques: How to Do Anything a Recipe Tells You to Do
by Beverly Cox, by Joan Whitman
Little, Brown, 576 pp., $29.95
The Cook's Handbook
by Prue Leith
A & W, 224 pp., $14.95
Judith Olney's Entertainments: A Cookbook to Delight the Mind and Senses
Barron's, 307 pp., $24.95
A new cookbook promises satisfactions beyond those of the table, promises both order and change, security and self-improvement. It is the ultimate readerly text; between its lines one glimpses unfamiliar worlds; compelled by its imperatives, the mind occupies itself in homely tasks, in imagination restocking the cupboards with raspberry vinegar, filling the freezer with brown sauce, veal stock, fish fumet. This gives a pleasant sense of prudence, a hoarding satisfaction, and notions of magical hope. The season's new cookbooks suggest that hopes this year are entirely social and economic; mere eating is not the thing. Like lowered hemlines in hard times, the glossy and expensive volumes announce anxiety, the austere food a certain loss of appetite.
Review, 3238 words
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