From the NYT, 06.12.09
This season, the 1,000-plus recipe category also includes books of French and Italian cuisine. I KNOW HOW TO COOK (Je Sais Cuisiner) (Phaidon, $45) was written in the early 1930s by the Sorbonne home-economics teacher Ginette Mathiot, who was tapped to compile a comprehensive collection of recipes for young brides. The resulting 1,400 recettes tick through the French repertoire, from abricots à l’anglaise to zephyr veal scallops, and are written in a brisk, authoritative manner that assumes the reader does indeed know how to cook. As Mathiot wrote in the original introduction, “A good cookbook must only offer useful information.”
With up to six recipes per page, this translation by Imogen Forster is more “Joy of Cooking” than “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” Like “Joy,” Mathiot’s book has been updated through the years. Considerable visual charm aside, it earns its chunk of shelf space with unfamiliar vintage dishes like potage à l’aurore, sauce bâtarde and sheep’s foot rémoulade. You’ll have to make them on faith, like the chocolate cake that requires grating rather than melting chocolate. It wasn’t the chocolate cake I had envisioned (i.e., a brown one), but given the mystery factor and brisk instructions, it was a pleasant surprise nonetheless. Under Mathiot’s guidance, the vanilla soufflé did exactly as told, which is really all you can ask.
