VOYAGE GASTRONOMIQUE: A Culinary Autobiography

Part I is a personal memoir, an amusing, lighthearted record of a gilded childhood and youth primarily in the first two decades of this century when her early life was dominated by a gloriously self-indulgent father who roamed hither and yon in the interests of authentic eating and bibbing. The Lebkuchen crumbs to be used in Sauce Polonaise must come from Nuremberg, the smoked eels from Hamburg, etc. And wine tours, with conferences and orders accomplished on vineyard soil, were extensive. The author reminisces about those small hotels which boasted at least one pristine dish, trips in steamers and chauffeured cars, friends of the family -- many divas, tenors and conductors from the Metropolitan opera, summers in Connecticut where vocal exercises awakened all Norfolk, and doings of the the dansant crowd -- including one coast down Sixth Avenue on a hospital stretcher (the author was in a cast from neck to toe), all hands hanging on and singing. Part II contains generally difficult and wildly haut recipes (a Chicken Jeanette with truffles, pate, sherry) or Caruso Torte (a veritable glissando of processes). But all great fun.