What’s in it for me? A vivid snapshot of how the Parisian avant garde wined and dined.
Alice B. Toklas is a name that rings out in a few, wildly different communities. She is well-known in the literary world primarily as the life partner of Gertrude Stein, the writer and art collector. They lived together in Paris from 1910 through the Second World War, and hosted an artist’s salon frequented by luminaries of the Parisian art world: Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Henri Matisse, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her table became renowned for its culinary delights, drawing from French tradition, colonial influences, and her own Californian roots.
The cookbook that she published in 1954 is the source of her fame in an entirely different community. The recipe she includes for “haschich fudge,”which she cheekily recommends serving at Ladies’ Bridge Club, became a breakaway hit as the counterculture of the 1960s gained momentum. Experimentalists were so thrilled by the recipe that Alice B. Toklas’s name became synonymous with cannabis edibles.
The Alice B. Toklas cookbook includes recipes, some of which you’ll encounter here. (They’re available in full at the end of the Blinks.) But it’s also a recollection of her time in France as a carefree expat, steeped in the sensual pleasures of art, cooking, and good company.
In these Blinks, you’ll learn:
the one simple dish you should ask someone to make when interviewing potential kitchen staff;
the best way to kill a vigorous carp; and
what dish to serve a guest you wish to insult.
Becoming a gourmet French chef.
France is a famously artistic culture. People all over the world adore French literature, painting, and fashion – but none more so than the French themselves. Part of the reason French art is so good is because the French approach it with gravity, respect, and intelligence. And no art, arguably, is more important to the French than that of the kitchen.
Respect is a key concept when it comes to French cooking. In order to successfully cook French food, reverence for tradition is paramount. Despite how labor-intensive French cooking can be, French cooks sniff at American shortcuts. What was once said about their Bourbon kings remains true of French cooks: they learn nothing, and they forget nothing.
French cooking can be persnickety. Even a simple potato salad has its own set of rules. The salad is to be served surrounded by chicory. The substitution of any other green is inconceivable. If chicory is unavailable, the dish must not be attempted.
Similarly, French food requires deep respect for the unique charms of each ingredient. Seasonal French produce is of excellent quality, and French recipes are designed to make each one sing. Even common root vegetables like potatoes, carrots, and leeks – the asparagus of the poor – are transformed into jewels by high quality olive oil, butter, and discreet use of herbs.
On the subject of butter, the French look facts in the face. Fat is delicious, and French butter is high quality. Therefore it is used copiously in French dishes, to marry flavors together. There can be no substitute.
The home kitchen has traditionally been the domain of women. But French men are as enthusiastic as women about food. Both genders’ love of their culture’s food has helped propel French cuisine to its current lofty heights. Alice claims that a husband’s interest in the fruits of the kitchen can raise the standard of cooking in a home, because the wife will be encouraged by his constant gentle criticism to put in a greater effort. The criticism from her own partner, Gertrude, helped develop Alice as a gourmet. Gertrude was often too busy to cook herself– but not too busy to enjoy Alice’s culinary experimentations.
Alice and Gertrude weren’t the only finicky foodies in their milieu. At a lunch party Alice attended, a servant presented each dish for the hostess’s inspection before serving her guests. When presented with a certain aspic of foie gras, the hostess carefully appraised it, then with a brusque hand gesture, dismissed it. The aspic went back to the kitchen, and her guests went without their foie gras. It simply wasn’t good enough.
Perfecting a quintessential French dish.
Given that the French are known for having strong opinions and for enjoying spirited debate, it might not surprise you to find yourself in an argument about what exactly French cooking is. To someone from Alsace Lorraine, a region in the north-east famous for succulent salt pork and creamy cheese, the best example of French cuisine might be Alice’s recipe for Quiche de Nancy, a rich, eggy tart filled with cubed ham and cream.
For someone from Burgundy wine country, bœuf Bourguignon is without a doubt the archetypal French dish, made with dry red Burgundy wine. Without the right wine, there’s little point attempting the dish at all.
And for a person from Marseilles, there can be no question: bouillabaisse is the most French dish of all.
Alice and Gertrude became addicted to bouillabaisse while summering in Saint Rémy, a small Provençal town about 90 kilometers from Marseilles, France’s Mediterranean port city. The countryside around the village had a poignant beauty, but the food at the inn in town was, she says, “thoroughly insupportable.” Twice per month the couple drove down to Marseilles to scratch their itch for a real restaurant bouillabaisse. It soon became clear that Alice would have to learn to make it herself, and shared her version in the cookbook.
The fish, at least five different kinds, must be caught and cooked the same day. Any combination of red snapper, mullet, pike, durbot, dory, and gurnard will do. Leave the smaller ones whole, but remove the heads of the large ones and cut the rest into one-inch slices. Boil the heads in salted water with one carrot, one onion, one bay leaf, and a sprig of thyme. Skim, and boil until reduced by half, then mash finely. Boil one lobster and one crab and remove the meat.
Then, fry three-quarters of a cup sliced onions, three crushed shallots, three crushed garlic cloves, half a sweet pepper, one large sliced tomato, four stalks celery, one slice fennel, three sprigs thyme, one bay leaf, two cloves, a slice of orange rind, salt, and pepper in half a cup of olive oil.
To the vegetable mixture, add the fish bouillon and boil covered for five minutes over high heat. Add the larger fish pieces first, cook for five minutes, then add the rest of the fish and lobster. Boil furiously for five minutes, then remove the fish and lobster. Strain the liquid from the vegetables. Add cooked clams and crab meat. Then add a quarter teaspoon powdered saffron that has been soaked in five tablespoons of the hot broth. Serve the fish over half-inch slices of bread, and ladle hot broth on top.
It’s possible, Alice says, to use this recipe to cook fish from the Atlantic, or even with freshwater fish, if you insist. But it won’t be a bouillabaisse. Not really.
Serving interesting food to interesting guests.
When you find yourself entertaining the greatest artistic luminaries of your generation, be sure to make careful note of what you serve them, and how it was received. Your notes may become entertaining reading for future generations, and perhaps even the emblem of a cultural movement.
As Alice grew accustomed to life in Paris, she grew more adventurous with what she served. One day when the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso was over for lunch, she decided to get Cubist with a poached fish. After coating it with mayonnaise, she decorated it with tomato paste, sieved egg yolks, and finely chopped green herbs. Picasso was impressed, says Alice, but commented that it really should have been served to Matisse instead.
Picasso was also known for making perplexing comments when taking his meals. “Cruel enigma,” he said, when a spinach soufflé was set down in front of him.
Perhaps even more avant garde is an omelette recipe Alice got from the French painter Francis Picabia. Stir eight eggs slowly over low heat, with at least half a pound of butter, for 30 minutes. The recipe results in what Picabia calls “a suave consistency that perhaps only gourmets will appreciate.”
In a chapter devoted to recipes from her numerous friends, Alice innocently includes a recipe for “haschich fudge” from Brion Gysin, the sound poet and painter who was one of the Beat generation’s finest. When consumed with large quantities of hot mint tea, Alice claims that the “fudge” is a cure for the common cold.
To make the fudge, pulverize one teaspoon each black peppercorns and coriander, four sticks of cinnamon, and one nutmeg in a mortar, then mixed with a bunch of cannabis sativa. Alice leaves the exact amount of cannabis up to the cook, but you’d be advised to go easy. Dust this combination over a handful each of dates, dried figs, peanuts, and almonds that have been chopped and kneaded together. Finally, form into walnut-size balls with a big pat of butter, melted, and a cup of sugar.
Two pieces are quite sufficient, Alice says, to attain ecstatic reverie. If you elect to grow your own cannabis, it should be harvested and dried as soon as the plant goes to seed.
This early recipe for cannabis edibles caused American audiences to collectively clutch their pearls, to the great delight of the various counterculture movements gathering steam across the country. Alice’s name would be associated with cannabis edibles for the rest of the century.
Becoming a conscious carnivore.
If you wanted to eat meat in wartime France, it was sometimes necessary to kill animals. Not just cause an animal’s death, but actually kill it with your bare hands – or sometimes a knife. Facts, however unpleasant, are facts. Before any cooking begins, of meat dishes anyway, crime must be committed.
The only way to learn to do something is to do it. Alice’s first victim was a spirited carp, delivered in a covered basket by a fisherman who was in too much of a rush to tell her how to dispatch it. Judging the fish too vigorous to submit to a blow to the head, she realized her only option was to sever the base of its vertebral column. A sharp knife did the trick in an instant, but Alice needed to sit down and smoke several cigarettes to recover her strength.
After cleaning and gutting the fish, she prepared a chestnut stuffing for it. First, she soaked a two-inch slice of bread in dry, white wine, squeezed it to dry, then cut the bread into cubes. Then, she fried a chopped onion gently in three tablespoons butter, and added the bread, one tablespoon chopped parsley, two chopped shallots, one clove pressed garlic, one teaspoon salt, 12 boiled chestnuts, and a quarter teaspoon each black pepper, powdered mace, laurel, and thyme. She allowed the mixture to cool, and, after mixing with one raw egg, stuffed it into the carp’s body and head cavities, sealing the fish with skewers. After resting for several hours, she baked the carp for 20 minutes at 190°C in two cups white wine and three tablespoons butter, under a fine coating of cracker crumbs. The carp’s head, she reports, is particularly delectable.
Later, she learned from one of her cooks the best method for dispatching young pigeons: smothering. This method was far more humane than chopping off their heads, the cook said, in the manner of the bloodthirsty Spanish. Plus, the smothered fowl is more plump and tasty, having retained its blood. Alice tried out the method when a friend gifted her six young white doves, destined for the table.
Smothering the birds was an unpleasant experience, but as she laid out what she calls the “sweet young corpses” one by one on her kitchen counter, she realized she could quite easily become accustomed to killing.
The simple dish that marks a skilled cook.
When Alice first moved to Paris, she was interested in food, but not in doing any cooking herself. That all changed when she moved in with Gertrude Stein. Living with Gertrude helped develop Alice’s cooking ability, but also her skill in managing a staffed kitchen.
Life in Paris in those days was so inexpensive that the vast majority of expats had household staff. It was customary for the cook to take Sunday afternoon and evening off. As a great artist, Gertrude Stein couldn’t be bothered with cooking, so Sunday dinner planning and prep fell to Alice. As Alice gained confidence, she began writing down her recipes. But for the most part, these weren’t so she could make them again. The recipes were so Alice could assign her cooks to make the dishes Gertrude liked best.
Staffing a Parisian kitchen in the 1920s and 30s was harder than it sounds. Satisfactory staff, Alice says, too often move on to other arrangements. And unsatisfactory staff greatly outnumber the satisfactory ones.
When interviewing potential kitchen staff, you can learn everything you need to know by asking whether the prospective cook can make a good omelette. The sensitivity and attention to detail required when making a classic omelette, Alice says, indicates a natural instinct for cooking. The cook who can make a good omelette will easily be able to pick up other recipes and techniques.
It’s also important for the cook to be sensitive to the subtleties of the host’s entertaining schedule, and adjust the preparation of the eggs accordingly. For instance, if a guest is to be honored, the cook should serve an omelette soufflé. A guest to whom the host is indifferent could be served an omelette with mushrooms or herbs, but if the host wishes to insult their guest, the cook should serve fried eggs.
Often the best cooking is found in the homes of French people who have lived abroad. Much of what Alice learned about cooking non-European dishes she learned from cooks from France’s colonies.
Jeanne, the couple’s altogether satisfactory cook from Martinique, taught Alice the method for a coconut marmalade pie. Melt two cups sugar and one cup water over a low flame. As it thickens, add one and a half cup freshly grated coconut, and boil until the coconut is transparent. Pour cream into a pie crust, then the coconut mixture, and bake at 175°C until the top is brown.
How to be a foodie under wartime conditions.
Living as an expat in France in the first part of the 20th century seems pretty dreamy. Life in Paris was cheap enough to spend years making art, and there were lots of clever, attractive people milling about, waiting to be asked to dinner. There was only one problem with Alice and Gertrude’s stimulating life on the cutting edge of the Parisian avant garde. France was continually plagued by German invasions.
The first world war presented an opportunity for adventure. Gertrude and Alice volunteered to make deliveries for the American Fund for French Wounded in their Ford Model T, nicknamed Aunt Pauline. One wonders about the efficacy of the womens’ labors. Alice reports that Gertrude was a responsible, if not experienced, driver: she knew how to do everything except go in reverse.
The couple was twenty years older when the next war broke out, and considerably less sprightly. Aunt Pauline had been replaced with Lady Godiva, a later model Ford two-seater, which squired the ladies to their rural home in Bugey, a village outside Lyon, where they waited out the war. They may have been older, but they were no less ingenious and resourceful.
As American Jews sheltering in occupied France, Alice and Gertrude relied on their community in Bugey to keep them safe and well-fed. Money wasn’t worth much, so they bartered with their neighbors for luxuries like coffee and sugar to supplement their rations. Their bread ration went to feed Basket, their treasured white poodle.
Gertrude proved skilled at black market shopping. Alice doesn’t know how she did it, but when Gertrude went out for a walk, she would always manage to come back with an egg or a bit of butter. “It’s not with money that one buys on the black market,” Gertrude said, “but with one’s personality.” No one else had the gift.
Soldiers were occasionally assigned temporary accommodation with them. In the beginning, these were German soldiers. The German army cooks use the house kitchen to cook for their officers; Alice describes the result as having no place in a cookbook.
By the end of the war, Italian soldiers were assigned to live with them. This situation was much more agreeable, because the soldiers had tobacco rations which they were keen to trade. Through the war, Alice and her friends had been rolling improvised cigarettes, using anything they could find in the garden. A friend of hers even poisoned themselves smoking fig leaves. For Alice, the arrival of the Italians – and their real tobacco – was perhaps as welcome as the end of the war itself.
Final summary
The key message in these blinks:
To cook like a French person, you must have deep respect for the integrity and provenance of each ingredient, using seasoning discreetly and fat liberally to bring out the inherent quality. To cook like a member of the Parisian avant garde, you must invite your friends frequently, take pride in what you serve them, and face challenges with stoicism, resourcefulness, and humor.
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What to read next: Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast by Ken Forker
You’ve just learned the fundamentals of French cooking, viewed through the eyes of Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein’s louche existence in early 20th century France. While waiting out World War II in their country home in rural France, Toklas maintained a huge kitchen garden, learning which fruits and vegetables grew best in their soil, and which recipes were the most delicious for their specific crops.
Fruit and vegetables are the cornerstone of any good diet. Another staple for health and pleasure is bread. In Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast, Ken Forker distills his years of experience as a professional baker into easy instructions for home bakers on making bread, pizza, and other custom doughs.