A Treasury of Great Recipes

Okay, I know what you’re thinking: “What makes this cookbook so great?”  Er, actually you’re probably thinking; “Wait, Vincent Price?  Really?”

Like most people of a certain age, my most vivid memory of Vincent Price is from Michael Jackson’s Thriller, but what made him so perfect for Thriller was that he was already established in my mind and in everyone else’s as Creepy.  Über –creepy.  What performances gave me this impression,  I’m not sure.  I’d probably seen him in House of Wax, and in various roles here and there.  More recently I came across him in an old time radio episode where he played a guy who liked to wall people up in his pipe organ. (Suspense: June 1^st, 1944 Fugue in C Minor)  Very creepy.

What I didn’t know is that Vincent Price and his wife, Mary, a costume designer, were noted gourmands and art lovers. Check it out on Wikipedia.

When this book came across my desk at work, though, it wasn’t the name Vincent Price that made me fall in love with it.  Sure it adds a fillip of interest, and the photos of Vincent Price are quite something, but really all the photos are Quite Something.

I think of my favorite cookbooks as narrative cookbooks:  they tell a story with their recipes.  They offer the romance of fine cooking, the history of a great restaurant, or a slice of a certain lifestyle.  This book does all of those.  Divided into geographic areas the recipes are grouped not by meal or ingredient, but by restaurant.  Major restaurants are introduced with an essay, two photographs, and a reproduction of their menu. Each recipe is introduced with a paragraph on its virtues. One can imagine oneself the jet-setter of 1965 visiting all these restaurants or the housewife trying to re-create some of their glamour for her dinner party (à la Betty Draper).

The book itself is sumptuous.  Lots of color photographs on coated paper interspersed with the uncoated pages of text printed in two colors decorated with charming illustrations.  There are two ribbon bookmarks.  In the back:  pages for you to record not only your own recipes but notes on your favorite wines and your favorite guests. That last makes me wish the previous owner of this book had filled in a few pages.

And of course, it offers a generous helping of delicious absurdity.  The very first recipe is Truite Farcie Fernand Point (Stuffed Trout Fernand Point) from M. Point’s restaurant, Pyramide, in France.  The recipe is in three parts: Stuffing (four steps), Fish (five steps) and Garniture (seven steps). Per the introduction:   

At the Pyramide, the fabulous trout they serve are caught in a nearby brook and kept alive in an outdoor aquarium near the kitchen until the chef is just ready to cook them. Moral: Only the freshest fishes are truly delicious.

The garniture is mostly what you see on top of the fish: the shrimp topped with a mushroom, topped with a shaving of truffle.  Because the dead eyes of the fish weren’t disturbing enough, we thought we’d add some eyes made of mushrooms. As the caption notes: “Beautiful to look at, beautiful to eat”