However, there was both a contagious relish in the description of those platters of milk toast, as well as an element of complete surprise. Where we today would have expected this foreign visitor to fall into rapture about our griddle cakes or hoe cakes or flap-jacks, here he was ecstatic over . . . milk toast?

This fascination was enough to not only make me want to try the dish myself but carry me through the profound disappointment of discovering that all all the early "milk toast" recipes in those aforesaid old cookbooks were for toast sopped in the early "milk toast" recipes in those aforesaid old cookbooks were for toast sopped in white sauce white sauce-milk thickened with flour or cornstarch.

This is a terrible terrible thing, and why it should be the case here, I simply don't know. I suspect the perpetual and tiresome gentility of most period cookbook authors, forever preferring the luscious thickness of a sauce, however faux, over honest plain milk or, more to the point, pricey and perishable sweet cream. thing, and why it should be the case here, I simply don't know. I suspect the perpetual and tiresome gentility of most period cookbook authors, forever preferring the luscious thickness of a sauce, however faux, over honest plain milk or, more to the point, pricey and perishable sweet cream.

So it is that flour is added to the milk toast recipe in every edition of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook The Fannie Farmer Cookbook until Marion Cunningham, newly at the helm, removed it from the 12th edition. Years later, in her until Marion Cunningham, newly at the helm, removed it from the 12th edition. Years later, in her Breakfast Book Breakfast Book, she would lament: Why in the world did we ever abandon milk toast? Although it sounds deceptively bland and dull, it isn't; and as the Victorians discovered, it can revive the peaked or sad. Nouris.h.i.+ng and soul-satisfying, milk toast will banish the blues. Why in the world did we ever abandon milk toast? Although it sounds deceptively bland and dull, it isn't; and as the Victorians discovered, it can revive the peaked or sad. Nouris.h.i.+ng and soul-satisfying, milk toast will banish the blues.

I suggest she turn around and point an accusatory finger at her predecessors-then give them a rap on the knuckles from me.

The earliest recipe I found for milk toast without this fiddling was in Mrs. Rorer's New Cook Book Mrs. Rorer's New Cook Book (1902). Her version is simple and to the point, and-see the caution-gives the dish the right sort of attentive respect. (1902). Her version is simple and to the point, and-see the caution-gives the dish the right sort of attentive respect.

Milk Toast is made by pouring scalding hot milk over dry toast. A tablespoonful of b.u.t.ter may be added to each quart of milk. To prevent scorching, heat the milk in a double boiler. Caution.-The main point is to pour the milk over the crisp warm toast at the very last moment, and serve quickly. Milk Toast is made by pouring scalding hot milk over dry toast. A tablespoonful of b.u.t.ter may be added to each quart of milk. To prevent scorching, heat the milk in a double boiler. Caution.-The main point is to pour the milk over the crisp warm toast at the very last moment, and serve quickly.

If Fannie Farmer had been so wise, this American cla.s.sic might not have become the forgotten dish it is today.

EVEN SO, real milk toast was never lost. Search the vernacular records and you will find such memories as those recorded by the Southern herbalist A. L. Tommie Ba.s.s, born in 1908. In Plain Southern Food Plain Southern Food, he recalls that when his father had "a bad stomach," he'd ask for some milk toast to soothe it.

Mother would first brown the bread and then she would put it in a bowl or something, and pour the milk over it, and add the sugar. Now, the way they made it in the army, why, they toasted the bread and dipped it in honey and milk, and put it back in the stove and browned it, you know. They didn't add spice, but some folks does. Mother would first brown the bread and then she would put it in a bowl or something, and pour the milk over it, and add the sugar. Now, the way they made it in the army, why, they toasted the bread and dipped it in honey and milk, and put it back in the stove and browned it, you know. They didn't add spice, but some folks does.

If you think about it, you can't imagine Tommie Ba.s.s's mother making a white sauce to cover the toast-not because it would be too much trouble, but because it would be frivolous and wrong, for the same reason that a child prefers a mug of chicken noodle to one of cream of chicken soup. There is comfort and pleasure even in canned noodles, but there is none in murk.

Consider, from that perspective, the version of milk toast that Tommie Ba.s.s remembers from the army: toast dipped in honey and milk, then crisped up in the oven. The recipient can relish each step of its making, as that slab of toast gets tastier and tastier. By the time you sit down to eat it, you're already half in a swoon.

When President James Garfield was shot by an a.s.sa.s.sin in 1881, he lingered on for months, for most of that time with a bullet lodged in his spine. He had a hard time keeping down solid food, so he was fed various meat broths, sc.r.a.ped raw beef, breast of woodc.o.c.k, koumiss koumiss (fermented mare's milk), rum and other spirits, and, almost always, milk toast. At one point, (fermented mare's milk), rum and other spirits, and, almost always, milk toast. At one point, the President said to Mrs. Garfield, who was sitting by his bedside, that he would like a piece of milk toast . . . Mrs. Garfield thereupon prepared the toast carefully herself, and the patient ate with apparent relish and enjoyment a piece about half as large as a man's hand.... the President said to Mrs. Garfield, who was sitting by his bedside, that he would like a piece of milk toast . . . Mrs. Garfield thereupon prepared the toast carefully herself, and the patient ate with apparent relish and enjoyment a piece about half as large as a man's hand....

Once you've shaken off that last odd image, let your mind step away from dish to the scene itself: the failing patient and the comforting wife who prepares for him a dish that is easily and quickly made, soothing to eat, and preceded by the primal aromas of hot milk and toast.

All this becomes more potent still, when the recipient is present during the ritual of actually making the dish. And this is especially so if that person is a sleepy, hungry child.

Small matters often seem great to children. Now, I would not willingly forget how, when I was a little girl, dear Grandma Wayne used to tempt my poor appet.i.te, of mornings, with such such milk-toast as no one else, I was very sure, could ever make. I have never, to this day, outgrown the taste thus cultivated for it, and of- ten when I am feeling out of sorts, and nearly sick, my thoughts turn to the blessed time when "grandma" made milk-toast in a pint basin for me in the mornings of long ago.... milk-toast as no one else, I was very sure, could ever make. I have never, to this day, outgrown the taste thus cultivated for it, and of- ten when I am feeling out of sorts, and nearly sick, my thoughts turn to the blessed time when "grandma" made milk-toast in a pint basin for me in the mornings of long ago....

-Arthur's Ill.u.s.trated Home Magazine (1874)

Even Mr. Toaster, who teaches the young heroine of Jane Eayre Fryer's The Mary Frances Cook Book The Mary Frances Cook Book (1912) to make milk toast for her ill mother, seems to have had the same childhood experience. When Mary Frances has the toast ready to bring upstairs, he exclaims, "That's right! That's the way my grandmother made it," and adds longingly, "That milk toast would taste awfully good." (She politely offers him a bite, but he declines, confessing that anything he puts in his mouth falls right out behind, which is why he is so thin.) (1912) to make milk toast for her ill mother, seems to have had the same childhood experience. When Mary Frances has the toast ready to bring upstairs, he exclaims, "That's right! That's the way my grandmother made it," and adds longingly, "That milk toast would taste awfully good." (She politely offers him a bite, but he declines, confessing that anything he puts in his mouth falls right out behind, which is why he is so thin.) Maggie Waldron, in Cold Spaghetti At Midnight Cold Spaghetti At Midnight, a book devoted to all sorts of spell-casting food, captures the milk toast ritual from the mother's perspective.

The very name of milk toast brought comfort to my daughter Sara. Especially when I suggested it might hit the spot. She always had it in the same bowl, made exactly the same way. The bread had to be white and dense and nicely toasted, two slices for a serving, well b.u.t.tered and sprinkled with cinnamon, with whole milk heated to simmering, and seasoned with salt and a generous grind of pepper. I watch in amazement as she goes through the same ritual with her own little girl. The very name of milk toast brought comfort to my daughter Sara. Especially when I suggested it might hit the spot. She always had it in the same bowl, made exactly the same way. The bread had to be white and dense and nicely toasted, two slices for a serving, well b.u.t.tered and sprinkled with cinnamon, with whole milk heated to simmering, and seasoned with salt and a generous grind of pepper. I watch in amazement as she goes through the same ritual with her own little girl.

For an experience to become a ritual, or at least possess the properties of one, the things involved must be few, so that their meaning is not diffused, and they must somehow a.s.sume a perceptible weight. They attain this partly from the rea.s.surance that comes of being " just so," and partly by already possessing the solidity of the absolutely familiar.

AS SOON AS I STARTED to a.s.semble the ingredients for my own first batch of milk toast, these same qualities began to a.s.sert themselves, starting with the loaf of bread. The artisan bakery where we get ours makes several wonderful loaves, but none of them seemed the thing for milk toast.

I had in mind the sort of old-fas.h.i.+oned loaf that grandma's grandma used to make, rectangular below and puffed out above, with a thin brown crust and a soft but chewy (and flavorful!) interior. This, of course, is what store-bought bread generally looks like, but never really is. Besides, it's all sliced, and I wanted to cut my own to just the right thickness.

I went to our local supermarket and, for the first time in years, moseyed down the bread aisle. The variety was simultaneously astonis.h.i.+ng and depressing. What was once, all on its own, considered the staff of life was now scattered with flax seeds and sold as a nutritional supplement. Most of it was sheer fakery-but, even worse, a few dense and sprout-riddled loaves might have been exactly that.

Matt suggested that I try the other, more conventional bakery in town. There I found what they called a "French loaf," although I doubt any bakery in France offers anything like it. This was a lazy sort of pain de mie, pain de mie, baked like ordinary bread rather than in the traditional closed pan that produces a loaf with a perfect rectangular shape and very tender crust. baked like ordinary bread rather than in the traditional closed pan that produces a loaf with a perfect rectangular shape and very tender crust.

However, "mie" means "crumb"-pain de mie has an interior that is tasty, tender, and moist, yet firm enough for slicing-and so had this bread, too. It was, essentially, a loaf of good old-fas.h.i.+oned white bread, meant for slicing, not pulling apart with your fingers, and just the thing for making milk toast. has an interior that is tasty, tender, and moist, yet firm enough for slicing-and so had this bread, too. It was, essentially, a loaf of good old-fas.h.i.+oned white bread, meant for slicing, not pulling apart with your fingers, and just the thing for making milk toast.

As to the milk, we live in an area that still has local dairies, including one with all Jersey cows. Getting first-rate milk is no problem at all (if we wanted, we could get it home delivered in gla.s.s bottles!) It was time to fire up the toaster.

By now, of course, I had perused many, many milk toast recipes, all of them similar but few of them the same. There were those who sweetened their milk toast and those who salted and peppered it (or both). There were those who b.u.t.tered their toast-some on one side and others on both sides-and those who b.u.t.tered their toast and and melted b.u.t.ter in the hot milk. There were a few who included a hot oven as part of their method, most elaborately by bake-toasting pullet-sized morsels of bread and then sopping them with the hot milk. melted b.u.t.ter in the hot milk. There were a few who included a hot oven as part of their method, most elaborately by bake-toasting pullet-sized morsels of bread and then sopping them with the hot milk.

I decided, however, that being naturally fussy about my milk, my bread, and the method of toasting it was plenty enough without any fancy flourishes (although the careful reader will note that some tagged along anyway).

SETTING THE SCENE. I didn't invite Matt to join me when I made milk toast for the first time, fearing the whole exercise would teeter over into paralyzing self-consciousness. In the future, when she is in a blue mood, I can surprise her with a bowl of it. Or, even better, hint around that, when I'm in a similar condition, she might surprise me me with it. with it.

In any case, I made milk toast on a morning when she was away at work. I laid my place at the table, set out the (unsalted) b.u.t.ter and sliced some of it into pats so these could soften a bit while I made the toast. Next to it, I put a small bowl of coa.r.s.e sea salt and the pepper grinder.

MAKING THE TOAST. I sliced the bread as thick as I could and still have it fit into the toaster slot. I then set the toaster at its lowest setting and pushed the toast down three or four times, rotating it a quarter turn before each descent. This got the slice toasted evenly all over, something no toaster seems capable of doing on its own.

HEATING THE MILK. I have bad luck heating milk on the stove. I close my eyes for one second one second to moisten my eyeb.a.l.l.s and, when I open them, the milk has boiled over and burned on the stove into a plaque of unremovable sc.u.m. So I poured the milk (about one cup) into a small pitcher and heated it in the microwave in thirty-second increments. It was plenty hot after three rounds. To further things along, I put the pitcher into the shallow bowl in which I planned to eat the milk toast, and heated this as well. to moisten my eyeb.a.l.l.s and, when I open them, the milk has boiled over and burned on the stove into a plaque of unremovable sc.u.m. So I poured the milk (about one cup) into a small pitcher and heated it in the microwave in thirty-second increments. It was plenty hot after three rounds. To further things along, I put the pitcher into the shallow bowl in which I planned to eat the milk toast, and heated this as well.

a.s.sEMBLING THE DISH. I sat down at the table, put one of the precut pats of b.u.t.ter onto the center of the piece of toast, and slowly poured the steaming milk over it, thus melting the b.u.t.ter and letting it spread over the top of the toast (and leaving a nice soft ma.s.s of it in the center, perfect for dipping). I did this a splash at a time, waiting until the toast had completely absorbed it. I wanted my milk toast to be sopped to perfection, but still capable of being eaten with a fork. The last thing I wanted was mush.

With pepper, I was prodigal; with salt, a miser. Despite the unsalted b.u.t.ter, I needed the merest pinch, sprinkled on each bite after I neatly cut it out with the edge of my fork.

THE EATING. It is tempting to become dewy-eyed at this moment-the steamy scent of the hot milk mingling with the toasty, wheaty aroma of the toast as the golden pat of b.u.t.ter liquifies, the fork tines slip into pulpy softness-tempting, because all these things are true.

But that would make milk toast seem like something you eat because it's delicious, and you don't, really. If you let the weight of the moment rest on that idea, you'll be disappointed. Milk toast is not a gourmet fantasy. It is about something else.

Usually, when I like what's set on my plate, I can't stop eating until it's all gone. I don't like that this is so, but there it is. Milk toast, however, is as nothing if eaten like this. You surrender to it and not the other way around.You don't step into a grove of cedars and huff and puff to get your lungs full of that vivifying resinous smell. Gasping spoils everything; the point is to just stand there and quietly breathe.

Milk toast is, at its best, quietly absorbing sustenance. It comforts; it gently sets you adrift in a pleasant, contemplative mist. In fact, it's like having a cat sleeping in your lap-you only really enjoy it when you're in the mood, but then there's nothing quite like it.

That, I think, is why the dish is "rather special"; it is "strangely popular" because those who aren't on its wavelength will never get what it's all about. We each have to find our own way to milk toast, and so no two recipes for it will ever be exactly the same.

Roties a la Creme ou au Lait Roties a la Creme ou au Lait Picayune Creole Cook Book Picayune Creole Cook Book (1901) (1901) 6 slices of Bread. 6 slices of Bread.

1 Pint of Hot Cream or Milk.

1 Tablespoonful of b.u.t.ter. Toast the bread nicely, and b.u.t.ter well on both sides. Lay in a dish, and pour over hot milk. Serve hot. Toast the bread nicely, and b.u.t.ter well on both sides. Lay in a dish, and pour over hot milk. Serve hot. Or, heat one pint of cream, add one large tablespoonful of b.u.t.ter, and pour over the hot toast. Slightly stale bread may be utilized in this way. This is a great supper dish among the Creole plantation homes of Louisiana. Or, heat one pint of cream, add one large tablespoonful of b.u.t.ter, and pour over the hot toast. Slightly stale bread may be utilized in this way. This is a great supper dish among the Creole plantation homes of Louisiana. Milk Toast Milk Toast Child Care Part 1. The Preschool Age, Child Care Part 1. The Preschool Age, Mrs. Max West (1918) Mrs. Max West (1918) Put on the table hot crisp toast or twice-baked bread (see below) and a pitcher of hot milk, slightly salted. One-fourth teaspoonful of salt to a cupful of milk is sufficient. Pour the milk over the toast as needed, using hot bowls or deep saucers for serving. This is the easiest way of serving milk toast, and, if care is taken to have all the dishes hot and to salt the milk, it is usually acceptable. Put on the table hot crisp toast or twice-baked bread (see below) and a pitcher of hot milk, slightly salted. One-fourth teaspoonful of salt to a cupful of milk is sufficient. Pour the milk over the toast as needed, using hot bowls or deep saucers for serving. This is the easiest way of serving milk toast, and, if care is taken to have all the dishes hot and to salt the milk, it is usually acceptable. Twice-Baked Bread. Twice-Baked Bread. Bread cut or torn into small pieces and heated in a very slow oven until thoroughly dried and very delicately browned is good food for children.... The advantage of tearing instead of cutting the bread is that it makes it lighter in texture and easier to eat. The crust should be torn into pieces about 2 inches wide. The inside of an ordinary loaf of bread will make 16 pieces of conventional size. Tear first across the loaf and then tear each half into eight pieces.... It is well to keep the crusts separate, as otherwise they are likely to get too brown. Bread cut or torn into small pieces and heated in a very slow oven until thoroughly dried and very delicately browned is good food for children.... The advantage of tearing instead of cutting the bread is that it makes it lighter in texture and easier to eat. The crust should be torn into pieces about 2 inches wide. The inside of an ordinary loaf of bread will make 16 pieces of conventional size. Tear first across the loaf and then tear each half into eight pieces.... It is well to keep the crusts separate, as otherwise they are likely to get too brown. Milk Toast Milk Toast Stillmeadow Kitchen, Stillmeadow Kitchen, Gladys Taber (1947) Gladys Taber (1947) I am one of those queer people who really like milk toast. Toast bread lightly, spread it with b.u.t.ter, and pour over it 1 cup of hot milk, add a big piece of b.u.t.ter, salt and pepper. Eat in a thoughtful mood. By tomorrow, you will want a poached egg dropped on it too. I am one of those queer people who really like milk toast. Toast bread lightly, spread it with b.u.t.ter, and pour over it 1 cup of hot milk, add a big piece of b.u.t.ter, salt and pepper. Eat in a thoughtful mood. By tomorrow, you will want a poached egg dropped on it too. Baked Milk Toast Baked Milk Toast Marion Harland's Complete Cook Book Marion Harland's Complete Cook Book (1906) (1906) Trim off the crust from slices nearly half an inch thick; toast to a uniform light brown. Have on the range a pan of boiling water, salted. As you remove each slice from the toaster dip quickly into the boiling water and lay in a well-b.u.t.tered pudding dish, b.u.t.tering the toast while smoking hot and salting each slice. When all the soaked toast is packed into place, cover with scalding milk in which has been melted a tablespoonful of b.u.t.ter. Cover closely and bake fifteen minutes. Trim off the crust from slices nearly half an inch thick; toast to a uniform light brown. Have on the range a pan of boiling water, salted. As you remove each slice from the toaster dip quickly into the boiling water and lay in a well-b.u.t.tered pudding dish, b.u.t.tering the toast while smoking hot and salting each slice. When all the soaked toast is packed into place, cover with scalding milk in which has been melted a tablespoonful of b.u.t.ter. Cover closely and bake fifteen minutes. This is so far superior to the usual insipid preparation of milk toast that no one who has eaten the first can enjoy the poor parody. This is so far superior to the usual insipid preparation of milk toast that no one who has eaten the first can enjoy the poor parody. Corn Bread Milk Toast Corn Bread Milk Toast Maggie Waldron, Maggie Waldron, Cold Spaghetti At Midnight Cold Spaghetti At Midnight When you have a stray piece of corn bread, and the world is too much with you. When you have a stray piece of corn bread, and the world is too much with you. Split 1 large square of corn bread or 1 corn m.u.f.fin and toast under the broiler. Spread with 1 tablespoon of b.u.t.ter and place in the center of a big warm bowl. Add 1 cups of hot milk and sprinkle with nutmeg. (Serves 1.) Split 1 large square of corn bread or 1 corn m.u.f.fin and toast under the broiler. Spread with 1 tablespoon of b.u.t.ter and place in the center of a big warm bowl. Add 1 cups of hot milk and sprinkle with nutmeg. (Serves 1.) Milk Toast Milk Toast M.F.K. Fisher, "The Midnight Egg and Other Restorers," M.F.K. Fisher, "The Midnight Egg and Other Restorers," Bon Appet.i.t Bon Appet.i.t (1978) (1978) To make a restful, nouris.h.i.+ng, delicious Milk Toast, on a cold night or any time at all when solitude seems indicated, warm a generous bowl while making two slices of toast. The bread should be firm and hearty, but not strongly flavored as is rye or pumpernickel. To make a restful, nouris.h.i.+ng, delicious Milk Toast, on a cold night or any time at all when solitude seems indicated, warm a generous bowl while making two slices of toast. The bread should be firm and hearty, but not strongly flavored as is rye or pumpernickel. Warm two cups of creamy milk, just to the simmer point. b.u.t.ter the toast generously and cut into cubes. Season the milk with salt, pepper and paprika if desired. Put the bits of b.u.t.tery toasted bread in the warm bowl, pour the seasoned milk over them, and walk gently to wherever you have decided to feel right in your skin. Warm two cups of creamy milk, just to the simmer point. b.u.t.ter the toast generously and cut into cubes. Season the milk with salt, pepper and paprika if desired. Put the bits of b.u.t.tery toasted bread in the warm bowl, pour the seasoned milk over them, and walk gently to wherever you have decided to feel right in your skin. Cream Toast Cream Toast Margery Taylor and Frances McNaught Margery Taylor and Frances McNaught, The Early Canadian Galt Cook Book (1898) (1898) Cream toast is a delightful, old-fas.h.i.+oned supper dish, not at all like its modern subst.i.tute, milk toast. Heat the cream by setting the dish containing it in a dish of boiling water. When the cream is thoroughly heated, salt it and drop thin slices of delicate brown toast in it. When all the toast is dipped, serve what hot cream remains in a gravy boat. As the toast is served, pour a little cream from the boat over it. This toast must be served very hot. Cream toast is a delightful, old-fas.h.i.+oned supper dish, not at all like its modern subst.i.tute, milk toast. Heat the cream by setting the dish containing it in a dish of boiling water. When the cream is thoroughly heated, salt it and drop thin slices of delicate brown toast in it. When all the toast is dipped, serve what hot cream remains in a gravy boat. As the toast is served, pour a little cream from the boat over it. This toast must be served very hot.

The Recipe File

WHAT'S THE RECIPE?: OUR HUNGER FOR COOKBOOKS By Adam Gopnik From The New Yorker The New Yorker

New Yorker cultural essayist Adam Gopnik is a wonderful companion for armchair travels through the food world. Something tickles his curiosity-a stack of cookbooks, say-and before you know it, we're off on an enthusiast's joy ride. cultural essayist Adam Gopnik is a wonderful companion for armchair travels through the food world. Something tickles his curiosity-a stack of cookbooks, say-and before you know it, we're off on an enthusiast's joy ride.

A man and a woman lie in bed at night in the short hour between kid sleep and parent sleep, turning down page corners as they read. She is leafing through a fas.h.i.+on magazine, he through a cookbook. Why they read these things mystifies even the readers. The closet and the cupboard are both about as full as they're going to get, and though we can credit the fas.h.i.+on reader with at least wanting to know what is in fas.h.i.+on when she sees it, what can the recipe reader possibly be reading for? The shelf of cookbooks long ago overflowed, so that the sad relations and failed hopes ("Monet's Table," "A Drizzle of Honey: The Lives and Recipes of Spain's Secret Jews") now are stacked horizontally, high up. The things he knows how to make that are actually in demand are as fixed as any c.o.c.ktail pianist's set list, and for a clientele of children every bit as conservative as the barflies around that piano: make Parmesan-crusted chicken-the "Feelings" of food-every night and they would be delighted. Yet the new cookbooks show up in bed, and the corners still go down. man and a woman lie in bed at night in the short hour between kid sleep and parent sleep, turning down page corners as they read. She is leafing through a fas.h.i.+on magazine, he through a cookbook. Why they read these things mystifies even the readers. The closet and the cupboard are both about as full as they're going to get, and though we can credit the fas.h.i.+on reader with at least wanting to know what is in fas.h.i.+on when she sees it, what can the recipe reader possibly be reading for? The shelf of cookbooks long ago overflowed, so that the sad relations and failed hopes ("Monet's Table," "A Drizzle of Honey: The Lives and Recipes of Spain's Secret Jews") now are stacked horizontally, high up. The things he knows how to make that are actually in demand are as fixed as any c.o.c.ktail pianist's set list, and for a clientele of children every bit as conservative as the barflies around that piano: make Parmesan-crusted chicken-the "Feelings" of food-every night and they would be delighted. Yet the new cookbooks show up in bed, and the corners still go down.

Vicarious pleasure? More like deferred frustration. Anyone who cooks knows that it is in following recipes that one first learns the anticlimax of the actual, the perpetual disappointment of the thing achieved. I learned it as I learned to bake. When I was in my early teens, the sick yearning for sweets that adolescents suffer drove me, in afternoons taken off from school, to bake, which, miraculously, meant just doing what the books said and hoping to get what they promised to yield. I followed the recipes as closely as I could: dense Boston cream pie, Rigo Jancsi slices, Sacher Torte Sacher Torte with apricot jam between the layers. The potential miracle of the cookbook was immediately apparent: you start with a feeling of greed, find a list of rules, a.s.semble a bunch of ingredients, and then you have something to be greedy about. You begin with the ache and end with the object, where in most of the life of appet.i.tes-courts.h.i.+p, marriage-you start with the object and end with the ache. with apricot jam between the layers. The potential miracle of the cookbook was immediately apparent: you start with a feeling of greed, find a list of rules, a.s.semble a bunch of ingredients, and then you have something to be greedy about. You begin with the ache and end with the object, where in most of the life of appet.i.tes-courts.h.i.+p, marriage-you start with the object and end with the ache.

Yet, if the first thing a cadet cook learns is that words can become tastes, the second is that a s.p.a.ce exists between what the rules promise and what the cook gets. It is partly that the steps between-the melted chocolate's gleam, the chastened, improved look of the egg yolks mixed with sugar-are often more satisfying than the finished cake. But the trouble also lies in the same good words that got you going. How do you know when a thing "just begins to boil"? How can you be sure that the milk has scorched but not burned? Or touch something too hot to touch, or tell firm peaks from stiff peaks? How do you define "chopped"? At the same time as I was illicitly baking in the afternoons, I was learning non-recipe main-course cooking at night from my mother, a scientist by day, who had long been off-book, as they say in the theatre, and she would show, not tell: how you softened the onions, made them golden, browned them. This practice got you deeper than the words ever could.

Handed-down wisdom and worked-up information remain the double piers of a cook's life. The recipe book always contains two things: news of how something is made, and a.s.surance that there's a way to make it, with the implicit belief that if I know how it is done I can show you how to do it. The premise of the recipe book is that these two things are naturally balanced; the secret of the recipe book is that they're not. The s.p.a.ce between learning the facts about how something is done and learning how to do it always turns out to be large, at times immense. What kids make depends on what moms know: skills, implicit knowledge, inherited craft, buried a.s.sumptions, finger know-how that no recipe can sum up. The recipe is a blueprint but also a red herring, a way to do something and a false summing up of a living process that can be handed on only by experience, a knack posing as a knowledge. We say "What's the recipe?" when we mean "How do you do it?" And though we want the answer to be "Like this!" the honest answer is "Be me!" "What's the recipe?" you ask the weary pro chef, and he gives you a weary-pro-chef look, since the recipe is the totality of the activity, the real work. The recipe is to spend your life cooking.

Yet the cookbooks keep coming, and we continue to turn down their pages: "The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook," "The Adaptable Feast," the ones with disingenuously plain names-"How to Roast a Lamb: New Greek Cla.s.sic Cooking" (a good one, in fact)-and the ones with elaborately nostalgic premises, like "Dining on the B. & O.: Recipes and Sidelights from a Bygone Age." Once-familiar things depart from their pages silently, like Minerva's owls. "Yield," for instance, a word that appeared at the top of every recipe in every cookbook that my mother owned-"Yield: six portions," or twelve, or twenty-is gone. Maybe it seemed too cold, too technical. In any case, the recipe no longer yields; it merely serves. "Makes six servings" or "Serves four to six as part of an appetizer" is all you get.

Other good things go. Clarified b.u.t.ter (melted b.u.t.ter with the milk solids skimmed and strained) has vanished-Graham Kerr, the Galloping Gourmet, once used it like holy water-while emulsified b.u.t.ter (melted b.u.t.ter with a little water whisked in), thanks to Thomas Keller's sponsors.h.i.+p, plays an ever-larger role. The cult of the cooking vessel-the wok, the tagine, the Dutch oven, the smoker, the hibachi, the Tibetan kiln or the Inuit ice oven or whatever-seems to be over. Paula Wolfert has a new book devoted to clay-pot cooking, but it feels too ambitious in advance; we have tried too many other modish pots, and know that, like Elvis's and Michael Jackson's chimps, after their hour is done they will live out their years forgotten and alone, on the floor of the closet, alongside the fondue forks and the spice grinder and the George Foreman grill. Even the imagery of cooking has changed. Sometime in the past decade or so, the actual eating line was breached. Now the cooking magazines and the cookbooks are filled with half-devoured dishes and cut-open vegetables. Michael Psilakis's fine Greek cookbook devotes an entire page to a downbeat still-life of torn-off artichoke leaves lying in a pile; the point is not to entice the eater but to enn.o.ble the effort.

WITH THEIR TORN LEAVES and unyielding pages, cookbooks have two overt pa.s.sions right now: one is simplicity, the other is salt. The chef 's cookbook from the fancy place has been superseded by the chef 's cookbook from the fancy place without the fancy-place food. David Waltuck, of the ever to be mourned Chanterelle, started this trend with his "Staff Meals," and now we have Thomas Keller's "Ad Hoc at Home," and, from Mark Peel, of the Los Angeles hot spot Campanile, "New Cla.s.sic Family Dinners." ("Every single recipe was tested in Peel's own home kitchen-where he has only one strainer, just like the rest of us, and no kitchen staff to clean up after him.") The simplicity is in part a reaction to the cult of complexity of Spain's Ferran Adria school of molecular cooks, with their cuc.u.mber foam and powdered octopus. Reformations make counterreformations as surely as right makes left; every time someone whitewashes a church in Germany, someone else paints angels on a ceiling in Rome. But simplicity remains the most complicated of all concepts. I have in one month stumbled over six simple recipes for making ragu or Bolognese-plain spaghetti sauce, as it used to be known, when there was only one kind-with chicken livers or without, diced chuck roast or hamburger, white wine or red. Yet all movements in cooking believe themselves to be movements toward greater simplicity. (Even the molecular gastronomes believe that they are truly elemental, breaking things down to the atomic level.) Curnonsky, the greatest of the interwar gourmands, was famous for preferring the cooking of the provinces and of grandmothers to the cuisine of restaurant chefs, and the result was such monuments of simplicity as Tournedos Curnonsky: filet of beef with grilled tomatoes, poached bone marrow, and cognac-port-and-black-truffle sauce.

Simplicity is the style, but salt the ornamental element-the idea of tasting flights of salt being a self-satirizing notion that Swift couldn't have come up with. The insistence on the many kinds of salt-not merely sea salt and table salt but hand-harvested fleur de sel, Himalayan red salt, and Hawaiian pink salt-is everywhere, and touching, because, honestly, it all tastes like salt. And now everyone brines. Brining, the habit of dunking meat in salty water for a bath of a day or so, seems to have first reappeared out of the koshering past, in Cook's Ill.u.s.trated Cook's Ill.u.s.trated, sometime in the early nineties, as a way of dealing with the dry flesh of the modern turkey, and then spread like, well, ocean water in a tsunami, until now both Keller and Peel are happy to brine everything: pork roasts, chicken b.r.e.a.s.t.s, shrimp, duck.

Although brining is defended with elaborate claims about tenderness, what it really does is make food taste salty, and all primates like the taste of salt. That's a feature, not a bug; we're doing what our peasant ancestors did, making meat into ham. Salted food demands a salty sweet, and we read that in Spain recently one connoisseur had "a chocolate ganache coated in bread floating in a small pool of olive oil with fleur de sel sprinkled on it," while we can now make pecan-and-salt caramel-cheesecake chocolate mousse with olive oil and flaky-salt sticky-peanut cookie bars for ourselves.

THE SALT FETISH HAS, I think, another and a deeper cause: we want to bond with the pro cooks. Most of what pro cooks have that home cooks don't is what plantation owners used to have: high heat and lots of willing slaves. (The slaves seem happy, anyway, until they escape and write that testimonial, or start that cooking blog.) But the pro cooks also salt salt a lot more than feels right to an amateur home cook; both the late Bernard Loiseau and the Boston cook Barbara Lynch have confessed that hyper-seasoning, and, in particular, high salting, is a big part of what makes pro cooks' food taste like pro cooks' food. But the poor home cook, without hope of an eight-hundred-degree brick oven, and lucky if he can press-gang a ten-year-old into peeling carrots, can still salt hard, and so salt, its varieties and use, becomes a luxury replacement, a sign of seriousness even when you don't have the real tools of seriousness at hand. a lot more than feels right to an amateur home cook; both the late Bernard Loiseau and the Boston cook Barbara Lynch have confessed that hyper-seasoning, and, in particular, high salting, is a big part of what makes pro cooks' food taste like pro cooks' food. But the poor home cook, without hope of an eight-hundred-degree brick oven, and lucky if he can press-gang a ten-year-old into peeling carrots, can still salt hard, and so salt, its varieties and use, becomes a luxury replacement, a sign of seriousness even when you don't have the real tools of seriousness at hand.

The urge to meld ident.i.ties with the pros is tied to a desire to get something out of a cookbook besides another recipe. For beneath those conscious enthusiasms and trends lies a new and deeper uncertainty in the relation between the recipe book and its reader. In this the Great Age of Disaggregation, all the old forms are being smashed apart and their contents spilled out like pinatas at a birthday party. The cookbook isn't spared. The Internet has broken what once seemed a natural tie, between the recipe and the cookbook, as it has broken the tie between the news story and the newspaper. You can find pretty much any recipe you want online now. If you need a recipe for mustard-shallot sauce or boeuf a la mode, you enter a few search terms, and there it is.

So the old question "What's the recipe for?" gives way to "What's the cookbook for?," which turns it, like everything else these days, toward the memoir, the confessional, the recipe as self-revelation. Barbara Lynch begins her book "Stir" with a preface that sounds like the opening pa.s.sages of "GoodFellas": "We were poor, fiercely Irish, and extremely loyal. The older boys I knew grew up to be policemen, politicians and criminals (often a mix of the three).... If I ever had thoughts at all as to what I might be when I grew up, they were modest ones. I might have pictured myself running a bar (in Southie) or opening a sub shop (in Southie). But having a restaurant of my own on Beacon Hill? No way. In fact, if a fortune teller had told me at fourteen what good things were in store for me, I would have laughed in her face and told her where she could shove such bulls.h.i.+t. . . . I marvel that any of us made it out of there without winding up in jail or the morgue." Michael Psilakis, in "How to Roast a Lamb," includes his own childhood traumas: "As I sat on top of the lamb, watching it struggle to free itself, as if in slow motion my father came up behind me, reached down over my right shoulder with a hunting knife, grabbed the lamb's head and ears, and, in one swift motion, slit the lamb's throat.... Blood shot out of the lamb like water from a high-pressure hose."You never had a moment like that with Julia Child or Joseph Wechsberg.

ANOTHER ANSWER TO THE QUESTION "What good is the cookbook?" lies in what might be called the grammatical turn: the idea that what the cookbook should supply is the rules, the deep structure-a fixed, underlying grammar that enables you to use use all the recipes you find. This grammatical turn is available in the popular "Best Recipe" series in all the recipes you find. This grammatical turn is available in the popular "Best Recipe" series in Cook's Ill.u.s.trated Cook's Ill.u.s.trated, and in the "Cook's Bible" of its editor, Christopher Kimball, in which recipes begin with a long disquisition on various approaches, ending with the best (and so brining was born); in Michael Ruhlman's "The Elements of Cooking," with its allusion to Strunk & White's usage guide; and, most of all, in Mark Bittman's indispensable new cla.s.sic "How to Cook Everything," which, though claiming "minimalism" of style, is maximalist in purpose-not a collection of recipes for all occasions but a set of techniques for all time.

You see a progression if you compare the cla.s.sics of the past century: Escoffier's culinary dictionary, Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins's "The New Basics," and Bittman's recently revised "Everything." The standard kitchen bible, the book you turn to most often, has evolved from dictionary to encyclopedia, and to anthology and then grammar. Escoffier's book was pure dictionary: quick reminders to clarify a point or make a variation eloquent. Escoffier lists every recipe for tournedos and all its variations. His recipes are summaries, aidememoires for cooks who know how to make it already but need to be reminded what's in it. (Is a bearnaise sauce tarragon leaves and stems, or just leaves?) This was the way all cooks cooked once. (In the B. & O. cookbook, one finds this recipe for short ribs: "Put short ribs in a saucepan with one quart of nice stock, with one onion cut fine, steam until nice and tender. Place in roasting pan and put in oven until they are nice and brown." That's it. Everything else is commentary.) In "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," as in Waverley Root's "The Food of France," which came out at around the same time, the turn is encyclopedic: here's all you can find on a particular kind of cooking, which you will master by reading this book. Things are explained, but, as in an encyclopedia, what is a.s.sumed is the need for more and deeper information about material already taken to be essential.You get a list not of everything there is but of everything that matters. Julia gives you only the tournedos recipes that count.

You didn't want to master the art of French cooking unless you believed that it was an art uniquely worth mastering. When people did master it, they realized that it wasn't-that no one style of cooking really was adequate to our appet.i.tes. So the cookbook as anthology arrived, open to many sources, from American Thanksgiving and Jewish brisket through Italian pasta and French Stroganoff-most successfully in "The New Basics" cookbook, which was the standard for the past generation. The anthology cookbooks a.s.sumed curiosity about styles and certainty about methods. In "The New Basics," the tone is chatty, informal, taking for granted that the readers-women, mostly-know the old basics: what should be in the kitchen, what kinds of machines to use, how to handle a knife.

THE COOKBOOKS of the grammatical turn a.s.sume that you don't know how to do the simple things, but that the simple things, mastered, will enable you to do it all. Bittman a.s.sumes that you have no idea how to chop an onion, or boil a potato, much less how chopping differs from slicing or from dicing. Each basic step is tenderly detailed. How to Boil Water: "Put water in a pot (usually to about two-thirds full), and turn the heat to high." How to Slice with a Knife: "You still press down, just with a little more precision, and cut into thick or thin slices of fairly uniform size." To saute: "Put a large skillet on the stove and add the b.u.t.ter or oil. Turn the heat to medium-high. When the b.u.t.ter bubbles or the oil s.h.i.+mmers, add the food you want to saute." Measuring dry ingredients, you are told to "scoop them up or use a spoon to put them in the cup." And, "Much of cooking is about heat."

This all feels masculine in tone-no pretty side drawings, a systematic progression from recipe to recipe-and seems written mainly for male readers who are either starting to cook for friends or just married and learning that if you don't cook she's not about to. The old "New Basics," one recalls nostalgically, was exclamatory and feminine. "The celebration continues," reads the blurb, and inside the authors "indulge" and "savor" and "delight"; a warm chicken salad is "perfection when dressed in even more lemon," another chicken salad is "lush and abundant." The authors' perpetual "we" ("We like all our holidays accompanied with a bit of the bubbly"), though meant, in part, to suggest a merry partners.h.i.+p, was generous and inclusive, a "we" that honest-to-G.o.d extended to all of their readers.

Bittman never gushes but always gathers up: he has seven ways to vary a chicken kebab; eighteen ideas for pizza toppings; and, the best, an "infinite number of ways to customize" mashed potatoes. He is cautious, and even, post-Pollan, skeptical; while Rosso and Lukins "love" and "crave" their filet of beef, to all of animal flesh Bittman allows no more than "Meat is filling and requires little work to prepare. It's relatively inexpensive and an excellent source of many nutrients. And most people like it." Most people like it! Most people like it! Rosso and Lukins would have tossed out any recipe, much less an entire food group, of which no more than that could be said. Lamb is a thing they "fall in love with again every season of the year," and of pork they know that it is "divinely succulent." Bittman thinks that most people like it. His tone is that of Ed Harris in "Apollo 13": Let's work the problem, people. Want to thicken a sauce? Well, try Plan A: cook it down. Copy that, Houston. Plan A inadequate? Try Plan B: add roux. And so on, ever upward, until you get to the old one, which they knew on the B. & O.: add a little cornstarch. The progressive pattern appeals to men. The implication, slightly illusory, is that there's a neat set of steps from each point to the next, as in a Bill Walsh pa.s.s pattern: each pattern on the tree proceeds logically and the quarterback just has to look a little farther upfield. Rosso and Lukins would have tossed out any recipe, much less an entire food group, of which no more than that could be said. Lamb is a thing they "fall in love with again every season of the year," and of pork they know that it is "divinely succulent." Bittman thinks that most people like it. His tone is that of Ed Harris in "Apollo 13": Let's work the problem, people. Want to thicken a sauce? Well, try Plan A: cook it down. Copy that, Houston. Plan A inadequate? Try Plan B: add roux. And so on, ever upward, until you get to the old one, which they knew on the B. & O.: add a little cornstarch. The progressive pattern appeals to men. The implication, slightly illusory, is that there's a neat set of steps from each point to the next, as in a Bill Walsh pa.s.s pattern: each pattern on the tree proceeds logically and the quarterback just has to look a little farther upfield.

GRAMMARS TEACH FOREIGN TONGUES, and the advantage of Bittman's approach is that it can teach you how to cook. But is learning how to cook from a grammar book-item by item, and by rote-really learning how to cook? Doesn't it miss the social context-the dialogue of generations, the commonality of the family recipe-that makes cooking something more than just a.s.sembling calories and nutrients? It's as if someone had written a book called "How to Play Catch." ("Open your glove so that it faces the person throwing you the ball. As the ball arrives, squeeze the glove shut.") What it would tell you is not that we have figured out how to play catch but that we must now live in a culture without dads. In a world denuded of living examples, we end up with the guy who insists on making Malaysian Shrimp one night and Penne all'Amatriciana the next; it isn't about anything except having learned how it's done. Your grandmother's pound cake may have been like concrete, but it was about a whole history and view of life; it got that tough for a reason.

The metaphor of the cookbook was long the pet metaphor of the conservative political philosopher Michael Oakeshott in his a.s.sault on the futility of thinking that something learned by rote was as good as what was learned by ritual. Oakeshott's much repeated point was that one could no more learn how to make good government from a set of rules than one could learn how to bake a cake by reading recipe books. The cookbook, like the const.i.tution, was only the residue of a practice. Even the most grammatical of cookbooks dies without living cooks to illuminate its principles. The history of post-independence African republics exists to prove the first point; that Chocolate Nemesis cake that always fails but your friends keep serving anyway exists to prove the second. Unsupported by your mom, the cookbook is the model of empty knowledge.

All this is true, and yet the real surprise of the cookbook, as of the const.i.tution, is that it sometimes makes something better in the s.p.a.ce between what's promised and what's made. You can follow the recipe for the exotic thing-green curry or paella-and though what you end up with would shock the natives, it may be just as good as or even better than the thing intended. Before I learned that green curries were soupy, I made them creamy, which actually is nicer. In politics, too, where the unwritten British const.i.tution has been turned into a recipe-as in the const.i.tutions of Canada and Australia-the condensation of practices into rules can make for a rain of better practices; the Canadian const.i.tution, for instance, wanting to keep the bicameral vibe of a House of Lords without having a landed gentry, turned it into a Senate of distinguished citizens by appointment, an idea that can rebound back as a model for the new House of Lords. Between the rule and the meal falls the ritual, and the real ritual of the recipe is like the ritual of the law; the reason the judge sits high up, in a robe, is not that it makes a difference to the case but that it makes a difference to the clients. The recipe is, in this way, our richest instance of the force and the power of abstract rules. All messages change as they're re-sent; but messages not sent never get received. Life is like green curry.

HOWEVER WE TAKE COOKBOOKS-grammatically or encyclopedically, as storehouses of craft or illusions of knowledge-one can't read them in bed for many years without feeling that there is a conspiracy between readers and writers to obscure the ultimate point. A kind of primal scene of eating hovers over every cookbook, just as a primal scene of s.e.x lurks behind every love story. In cooking, the primal scene, or substance, is salt, sugar, and fat held in maximum solution with starch; add protein as necessary, and finish with caffeine (coffee or chocolate) as desired. That's what, suitably disguised in some decent dimension of dressup, we always end up making. We make bearnaise sauce by whisking a stick of melted b.u.t.ter into a couple of eggs, and, now that we no longer make bearnaise sauce, we make salsa verde by beating a cup of olive oil into a fistful of anchovies.The herbs change; the hope does not.

Mark Peel, in his Campanile cookbook, comes near to giving the game away: "We chefs all lie about our mashed potatoes," he admits. "We don't tell you we've used 1 pounds of cream and b.u.t.ter with 1 pounds of potatoes. You don't need to know." (Joel Robuchon, the king of his generation of French cooks, first became famous for a puree that had an even higher proportion of b.u.t.ter beaten into starch.) After reading hundreds of cookbooks, you may have the feeling that every recipe, every cookbook, is an attempt to get you to attain this ideal sugar-salt-saturated-fat state without having to see it head on, just as every love poem is an attempt to maneuver a girl or a boy into bed by talking as fast, and as eloquently, as possible about something else. "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate" is the poetic equivalent of simmering the garlic with ginger and Sauternes before you put the cream in; the end is the cream, but you carefully simmer the garlic.

ALL APPEt.i.tES HAVE THEIR ILLUSIONS, which are part of their pleasure. Going back to our own primal scene, that's why the husband turns those pages. The truth is that we don't pa.s.sively look at the pictures and leap to the results; we actively read the lines and internally act out the jobs. The woman who reads the fas.h.i.+on magazines isn't pa.s.sively imagining the act of having; she's actively imagining the act of shopping. (And distantly imagining the act of wearing.) She turns down pages not because she wants to look again but because, for that moment, she really intends to buy that-for a decisive imagined moment she did buy it, even if she knows she never will. Reading recipe books is an active practice, too, even if all the action takes place in your mind. We reanimate our pa.s.sions by imagining the possibilities, and the act of wanting ends up mattering more than the fact of getting. It's not the false hope that it will turn out right that makes us go on with our reading but our being resigned to the knowledge that it won't ever, quite.

The desire to go on desiring, the wanting to want, is what makes you turn the pages-all the while aware that the next Boston cream pie, the sweet-salty-fatty-starchy thing you will turn out tomorrow, will be neither more nor less unsatisfying than last night's was. When you start to cook, as when you begin to live, you think that the point is to improve the technique until you end up with something perfect, and that the reason you haven't been able to break the cycle of desire and disillusion is that you haven't yet mastered the rules. Then you grow up, and you learn that that's the game.

MY INNER CHILD.

By Charlotte Freeman From culinate.com

Novelist Charlotte Freeman (Place Last Seen) blogs about the quotidian joys and challenges of her scaled-back life in Livingston, Montana, at blogs about the quotidian joys and challenges of her scaled-back life in Livingston, Montana, at http://livingsmallblog.com. Tragedy and comedy are often intermingled-as in this essay, where conquering a new recipe is one way to mourn her brother's death.

Last summer-nearly half a century after its initial publication-Julia Child's cla.s.sic cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking Mastering the Art of French Cooking hit the top of the national bestseller charts. The phenomenon was, of course, driven by the late-summer (and now video) release of the movie "Julie & Julia," which I confess I have not yet seen, although I was an early and ardent supporter of Julie Powell's blog, the Julie/Julia Project. hit the top of the national bestseller charts. The phenomenon was, of course, driven by the late-summer (and now video) release of the movie "Julie & Julia," which I confess I have not yet seen, although I was an early and ardent supporter of Julie Powell's blog, the Julie/Julia Project.

A flurry of articles immediately ensued: about how difficult it is to cook out of Mastering Mastering, and about the panic ensuing among ordinary cooks when confronted with the amounts of b.u.t.ter and cream called for in Child's cla.s.sic French recipes.

On the one hand, Regina Schrambling warned Slate Slate readers not to buy the book, because "you'll never cook from it." readers not to buy the book, because "you'll never cook from it."

On the other hand, the very New York Times New York Times article in which Child's bestseller status was announced also quoted a Florida woman who, horrified by the inclusion of salt pork in the famous boeuf bourguignonne recipe, decided that a can of cream of mushroom soup, a can of French onion soup, and a can of red wine were acceptable subst.i.tutes. article in which Child's bestseller status was announced also quoted a Florida woman who, horrified by the inclusion of salt pork in the famous boeuf bourguignonne recipe, decided that a can of cream of mushroom soup, a can of French onion soup, and a can of red wine were acceptable subst.i.tutes.

"Yes, Julia Child rolled over in her grave when I opened the cream of mushroom soup," Melissah Bruce-Weiner told the paper. "But you know what? That's our world."

Perhaps. But it's also a world in which everyone seems to be missing the point of both Mastering the Art of French Cooking Mastering the Art of French Cooking and of the Julie/Julia Project. Both were about mastery, not about everyday ease. and of the Julie/Julia Project. Both were about mastery, not about everyday ease.