Angelo M. Pellegrini - The Unprejudiced Palate: Classic Thoughts on Food and the Good Life

ALSO FROM THE MODERN LIBRARY FOOD SERIES

Life la Henri by Henri Charpentier and Boyden Sparkes

Clmentine in the Kitchen by Samuel Chamberlain

Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century by Laura Shapiro

Cooking with Pomiane by Edouard de Pomiane

High Bonnet: A Novel of Epicurean Adventures by Idwal Jones

Katish: Our Russian Cook by Wanda L. Frolov

The Supper of the Lamb by Robert Farrar Capon

The Passionate Epicure: La Vie et la Passion de Dodin-Bouffant, Gourmet by Marcel Rouff

Endless Feasts: Sixty Years of Writing from Gourmet

Remembrance of Things Paris:
Sixty Years of Writing from Gourmet

2005 Modern Library Paperback Edition

Introduction copyright 2005 Mario Batali

Series introduction copyright 2005 Ruth Reichl

Copyright 1948, 1976 by Angelo Pellegrini

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Modern Library, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

M ODERN L IBRARY and the T ORCHBEARER Design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in 1948 by Macmillan Books, New York. This edition published by arrangement with the Estate of Angelo Pellegrini.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Pellegrini, Angelo M.
The unprejudiced palate: classic thoughts on food and the good life / Angelo Pellegrini; introduction by Mario Batali.
p. cm.(Modern Library food series)
Originally published: Macmillan, 1948.
eISBN: 978-0-307-78676-0
1. Gastronomy. 2. Cookery. I. Title. II. Modern Library food.
TX633.P3823 2005
641.013dc22 2004065597

www.modernlibrary.com

v3.1

Introduction to the Modern Library Food Series
by Ruth Reichl

THE UNPREJUDICED PALATE

Ruth Reichl

M Y PARENTS thought food was boring. This may explain why I began collecting cookbooks when I was very young. But although rebellion initially inspired my collection, economics and my mothers passion fueled it.

My mother was one of those people who found bargains irresistible. This meant she came screeching to a halt whenever she saw a tag sale, flea market, or secondhand store. While she scoured the tables, ever optimistic about finding a Steuben vase with only a small scratch, an overlooked piece of sterling, or even a lost Vermeer, I went off to inspect the cookbooks. In those days nobody was much interested in old cookbooks and you could get just about anything for a dime.

I bought piles of them and brought them home to pore over wonderful old pictures and read elaborate descriptions of dishes I could only imagine. I spent hours with my cookbooks, liking the taste of the words in my mouth as I lovingly repeated the names of exotic sauces: soubise, Mornay, duglr. These things were never seen around our house.

As my collection grew, my parents became increasingly baffled. Half of those cookbooks you find so compelling, my mother complained, are absolutely useless. The recipes are so old you couldnt possibly use them.

How could I make her understand? I was not just reading recipes. To me, the books were filled with ghosts. History books left me cold, but I had only to open an old cookbook to find myself standing in some other place or time. Listen to this, I said, opening an old tome with suggestions for dinner on a hot summer evening. I read the first recipe, an appetizer made of lemon gelatin poured into a banana skin filled with little banana balls. When opened, the banana looks like a mammoth yellow pea pod, I concluded triumphantly. Can you imagine a world in which that sounds like a good idea? I could. I could put myself in the dining room with its fussy papered walls and hot air. I could see the maid carrying in this masterpiece, hear the exclamations of pleasure from the tightly corseted woman of the house.

But the magic didnt work for Mom; to her this particular doorway to history was closed. So I tried again, choosing something more exotic. Listen to this, I said, and began reading. Wild strawberries were at their peak in the adjacent forests at this particular moment, and we bought baskets of them promiscuously from the picturesque old denizens of the woods who picked them in the early dawn and hawked them from door to door. The pastry was hot and crisp and the whole thing was permeated with a mysterious perfume. Accompanied by a cool Vouvray these wild strawberry tarts brought an indescribable sense of well-being.

Anything? I asked. She shook her head.

Once I tried reading a passage from my very favorite old cookbook, a memoir by a famous chef who was raised in a small village in the south of France. In this story he recalls being sent to the butcher when he was a small boy. As I read I was transported to Provence at the end of the nineteenth century. I could see the village with its small stone houses and muddy streets. I could count the loaves of bread lined up at the boulangerie and watch the old men hunched over glasses of red wine at the caf. I was right there in the kitchen as the boy handed the carefully wrapped morsel of meat to his mother, and I watched her put it into the pot hanging in the big fireplace. It sizzled; it was so real to me that I could actually smell the daube. My mother could not.

But then she was equally baffled by my passion for markets. I could stand for hours in the grocery store watching what people piled into their carts. I can look through the food, Id try to explain. Just by paying attention to what people buy you can tell an awful lot about them. I would stand there, pointing out who was having hard times, who was religious, who lived alone. None of this interested my mother very much, but I found it fascinating.

In time, I came to understand that for people who really love it, food is a lens through which to view the world. For us, the way that people cook and eat, how they set their tables, and the utensils that they use all tell a story. If you choose to pay attention, cooking is an important cultural artifact, an expression of time, place, and personality.

I know hundreds of great cookbooks that deserve to be rescued from oblivion, but the ones I have chosen for the Modern Library Food Series are all very special, for they each offer more than recipes. You can certainly cook from these books, but you can also read through the recipes to the lives behind them. These are books for cooks and armchair cooks, for historians, for people who believe that what people eatand whyis important.

Two are books I once read to my mother. Clmentine in the Kitchen introduces one of the most lovable and entertaining characters who ever picked up a whisk. She is the ultimate bonne femme and a nostalgic reminder of a long-gone life when people were truly connected to the land.

Life la Henri, the memoir of the man who invented crpes suzette, is more than a memoir and more than a cookbook; in the nearly one hundred years that he was alive, Henri Charpentier watched the world and its food change on two continents. He fed both Queen Victoria and Marilyn Monroe, he made and lost fortunes, and he never lost his sense of humor. I have been in love with Henri for most of my life, and I think it is time the rest of the world got to meet him.