Cooking the Books

A few years back, Julie Powell cooked her way through Julia Child’s famed Mastering the Art of French Cooking and wrote about the experience on her blog. The blog became a best-selling book, and the book is now a movie, "Julie & Julia." Meryl Streep, no less, plays Julia.

Now others are cooking and blogging about making every recipe from cookbooks by star chefs like Thomas Keller or Gray Kunz.  Give the writers points for ambition. For originality? Not so much.

All of which got me thinking. Someone should make – and write about making –  every recipe from a historic cookbook like, say, Auguste Escoffier’s Ma Cuisine, or  Pellegrino Artusi’s La scienza in cucina e l’art di mangiar bene, or even Fannie Farmer’s The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. Preferably someone who has more time and energy than I do.

But if I were going to take on that kind of challenge, I’d choose M. Emy’s L’art de bien faire les glaces d’office. Written in 1768, it was the first cookbook totally devoted to ices and ice creams.

Emy made all sorts of ices and ice creams – pistachio, saffron, truffle, rye bread, raspberry, cinnamon, and many more. I’ve already made many of them, and adapted some for my cookbook, Ice Cream: The Ultimate Cold Comfort. Although I didn’t methodically make every single recipe in Emy’s book, it might be fun to do so.

But would it make make a good film? I don’t know. When I made some of the ice creams the first time, there was some drama, or possibly comedy. Like the time I forgot about the ice cream mixture cooking on the stove and wound up with curds and whey all over the kitchen. Or the time I put too much lemon peel in the lemon sorbet, and everyone spent the evening flossing.

A clever screenwriter could probably come up with a romantic angle. Boy meets girl at the dairy case buying cream. They fall in love over their mutual passion for pistachio, break up when he buys frozen yogurt, reconnect over orange marmalade ice cream.

Would Meryl Streep be interested? Probably not. But I think Drew Barrymore would be perfect as a novice cook trying to recreate all the recipes and having lots of kitchen mishaps.  As for Emy, I’d go with David Suchet. He played Inspector Poirot to persnickety perfection, so he’d be great as the meticulous M. Emy. I think the idea has possibilities.

Orange Marmalade Ice Cream

Emy did not believe in using ingredients out of season. He said they tasted better in season, and that waiting for them made them all the sweeter. But when his employer insisted on fruit ice cream in winter, Emy used preserves he’d made when the fruits were at their peak. That is what inspired this wonderful marmalade ice cream. It would probably be even better with preserves you make yourself. But I wouldn’t know.

1 cup top-quality Seville orange marmalade
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
3 cups heavy cream
2 tablespoons orange liqueur, such as Grand Marnier

If the marmalade has very long pieces of peel, chop it a little so the pieces are no more than a half- inch long.

Mix marmalade, lemon juice and cream together in a bowl and chill for at least 12 hours or overnight.

Churn in your ice cream machine, following manufacturer’s instructions. When it’s nearly done, add the liqueur.

Store tightly covered in freezer until ready to serve. Makes one quart.

Comments

[Karen Lewis]

Le Cordon Bleu World Food Media Awards are open for submission of entries! www.worldfoodmediaawards.com
I will email UCpress too! We would love to see your book/s entered for the 2010 competition. Feel free to email me karen@tasting-australia.com.au
Karen

[buy drugs online]

I love ice cream, Much better to post some picture of your recipe..

[Jeri Quinzio]

I love the idea of reading cookbooks like novels, and I think cookbooks do tell you a lot about time, place, and often, the author.
Jeri

[KMWall]

When I was 12 my great-aunt gave me a cookbook for Christmas (Good Housekeeping) and told me each recipe was like a little novel, and that you didn't know how it would all turn out to the very end. I have been reading cookbooks as if they were Agatha Christie murder mysteries ever since.
But I've been wondering if historical cookbooks - and after nearly fifty years Mastering qualifies as a period piece - could also tell you something about the time and place in which it is written.
Cookbooks, and by extension cooking, have so much to do with smell and taste and movies are a visual medium, that it would take a real artist to find the place where the one can make up for the lack of the other two. I, for one, am eagerly waiting the chance to see Meryl as Julia, although in my fantasy world Meryl would be the star of The Fannie Farmer Story.