SING A SONG OF SIXPENCE
Sheridan, Mary
Sing a Song of Sixpence By MARY SHERIDAN HAVE YOU EVER been "off your feed" (an ugly and vulgar expression, but apt)? For weeks I have been uninterested in food, not only in eating, but in buying...
...I don't own a chafing dish, so the portion of the book on chafing dish recipes didn't interest me...
...Good Liver Recipes Florence Brobeck was for a time the editor of the New York Herald Tribune Home Institute and has written extensively on food in newspapers and magazines...
...This, I think, is one of the best and most interesting cookbooks of recent years, and it can stand with pride on a bookshelf along with the Browns, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Irma S. Rom-bauer, M. F. K. Fisher (who has a new book coming out this Fall that I'm eagerly awaiting, called The Gastronomical Me), Sheila Hibben, and your particular favorites...
...I'm eager to try more than I have...
...She writes with a glib airiness that too many women behind desks seem to acquire, but that talking-down quality, and Hendrik Willem Van Loon's syrupy introduction, can't alter the real authority of her recipes...
...She has collected a few wonderful dishes from all over the world plus typically American recipes that often have just a touch of the all-important something different...
...she argues that the tiniest amount of soda shortens the time of cooking and therefore not only preserves "the lovely green color" but causes no more loss of vitamins than longer cooking in plain water...
...Taylor has "cooked every dish" in her book...
...Mrs...
...The slump, I hope, is over...
...She says in her Preface that she is a "housekeeper for a sizable and hungry family...
...The recipes are easy to follow, and she has some particularly good ones for vegetables, rice, and desserts...
...Or maybe it's because I've just read through, and begun experimenting on, two new cookbooks...
...She also has several noteworthy suggestions for preparing fish...
...Maybe it's because I've just read Mary O'Hara's lovely new book, Thun-derhead, where there's an exciting description of a mustard and hot black coffee sauce for steaks...
...Unlike Cook It In a Casserole, Mary Taylor's Economy for Epicures is an all-around cookbook...
...when the stew is cold, all fat should be removed...
...She doesn'k think a "mere pinch" of soda does too much harm to vegetables...
...Taylor's background...
...That sounds slightly Swedish and strange and intriguing...
...Taylor also believes that a ragout, that fancy word for stew, should be cooked the day before it's to be eaten and that it must be strained before cooling...
...These are the recipes I like especially: three good liver concoctions—liver eggplant casserole, liver and vegetable pie, and scalloped liver and potatoes...
...It has 1,198 recipes, to be exact, from soups through desserts, 400 menus, a sensible introduction on good meals at low cost, notes on war shortages, and two especially useful sections on quick meals and low-cost ones when the food budget, after a burst of holidays or guests, has to operate in low gear...
...I don't agree with her on roasting meat—she belongs to the classical Sheila Hibben school that insists on a quick searing at high temperature instead of the modern school of slow, even temperature...
...She thinks, too, that lettuce is best stored in the refrigerator in a brown paper bag...
...You can usually tell...
...I think she has...
...And some of the casserole dishes will have to be earmarked for use after the war by cooks who are hemmed in by ration points and money—these are casseroles that call for ham, or ham and veal, or almonds, and so on...
...Economy For Epicures' The second cookbook that has revived my interest in food is Economy for Epicures, by Mary L. R. Taylor (Oxford, $2.75...
...One is Cook It In a Casserole, by Florence Brobeck (Barrows, $2), which is completely devoted to casserole and chafing dish recipes, plus some good 'menu suggestions...
...I don't know anything about Mrs...
...She's An Individualist She's an individualist, and I like her for that...
...I violently disagree with her on the latter, but, as I said, I like her independence...
...And, according to the publishers, Mrs...
...It's a specialized cookbook, very useful if you're an addict, as I am, of casserole dishes, but by no means a general "cookery book," as my friend Margaret calls it...
...For weeks I have been uninterested in food, not only in eating, but in buying and cooking and serving it...
...I'm coming out of the slump...
...While those on the receiving end have exerted remarkable restraint in comments on the results, I have been all too conscious of the inevitable mediocrity of meals conceived and hatched without joy and imagination...
...It is also the most attractive cookbook— in its cover, paper, print, and charming drawings— I've seen since Cross Creek Cookery...
Vol. 7 • November 1943 • No. 44
