A few short months ago, my dear GMB had a garage sale. My mother emailed me as soon as she saw the posting to see if there was anything in particular I would want from her sale. I, of course, said “Everything. Mom, just take everything. I know I would love it all.” Mother, being the practical and logical one of we two, decided to get me the items she thought I really would enjoy and need. A few days later, a box of goodies arrived on my stoop brimming with treats from GMB. The box included a lovely bag, the sweetest sewing kit, a ’round duit’ and many books. In the stash of cookbooks was the very first printing of Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Cookbook. I have read online that this has been out of print for 30 years. I was delighted to have it because a) GMB had given it to her sister in 1969 (the note inside the front cover says so) and b) it was Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Cookbook.
I spent the next weeks reading the recipes and and tips within. Clearly the dishes are all created with butter, eggs and all the decadence of 50′s and 60′s recipes. Each time I returned to the book, I found myself rereading the introduction. It is a fascinating outlook of life in this era. She speaks of her kids listening to records and of bureau drawers. I love it and found myself rereading today and I decided to share. Here it is in it’s entirety for your reading pleasure.
Introduction
I believe that the ability to prepare and serve good and attractive meals is a delightful feminine virtue. The importance of this and of being a good housekeeper were drilled into me from the time I could walk.
Like most Americans, I am a mixture. I am Dutch, French, English, Irish–but in appearance and personality, strongly Dutch and for six generations my Holland heritage has been preserved reasonably intact. On one hand, I had the influence of my mother, a third generation American of English and Irish descent, who strongly needed around her all of the aspects of gracious living but who found them difficult to achieve without servants. She loved to entertain and liked cooking if it was part of this entertaining.
On the other hand, in our household, almost from the time that I was born, was my aunt, brought up in the New York-Dutch-American tradition wherein a woman must know all of the household arts whether or not she has servants to instruct. My Aunt Louise was the best housekeeper I have ever seen and one of the finest cooks. Her bureau drawers were always ready for inspection and her closets a delight of organization. My handsome grandfather, who looked like Charles Evans Hughes and lived to the rip age of ninety-five, was also a part of our household from my very early years. His very firm opinions and ukases in the matter of food and the running of a household impressed and almost terrified us all.
The men in our family were all quite sure of their roles as men, which in my opinion is the way it should be. My father and grandfather were never to be found in the kitchen mixing a cake. They did, however consider it their proper prerogative to purchase and carry home from the Washington Market every bit of meat the household consumed. The buying of meat, they held, was not a woman’s business, any more than was the carving of it. I still think the art of carving belongs to the male, but I am willing to agree that women have had to learn how to buy meat, just as many of us have had to learn how to carve, either because the men in the family won’t or because there are no men in the family.
When I was very young, about six, cooking was presented to me as a privilege. You had to be responsible and orderly to be allowed to proceed in the kitchen. I was permitted to prepare my own breakfast on Saturday mornings–but I had to clean up afterward.
My own three sons are given the same privilege, although they are not held to the rigorous cleaning up that I was held to–if they stack their dishes and put the post in the sink, I’m satisfied. They lend me their masculine talents in many ways–by changing fuses, by running the tape recorder for my writing, by taking out the garbage. I taught them how to feed themselves well, but I don’t want them to become unduly taken with their culinary skills to the neglect of such masculine ones as wood chopping, for which they are better adapted than am I.
Many people have said since the publication of Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette in 1952, that it should be followed by a complete cookbook. For, of course, I can cook. I enjoy preparing any kind of meal, but I prefer meals that have a special meaning–meals for guests. I even manage to feel a little guilty if I don’t have some part in the preparation of every meal for guests. No matter how tired or how busy I may be, I always rise to the occasion when a party is in the offing.
Like my Dutch ancestors who daily went to market as European women do today, I, too, like to see the food I am buying for my household. Not for me, except in an emergency, is the telephoned order. I plan, of course, to use fruits and other foods in season to keep my food budget always at the proper point. When entertaining runs a little heavy, I counterbalance it with economy meals for the family. I am careful to see that leftovers are used, and perhaps because I have such a dislike of waste, I allow my considerable family of pets to consume the scraps which otherwise might go into the garbage pail in another family.
My children and I, despite my career, have a warm and loving relationship. This comes partly, I believe, because they know that their mother, when necessity arises–and it certainly does–is able to run the household and feed them good meals under cheerful, happy circumstances no matter what happens. Children get a great feeling of security knowing just this: that despite her necessary and often greatly enjoyed outside activities, a mother considers her children’s welfare first and is willing to contribute to it with her own domestic talents.
The running of a home and preparation of food is creative. This is something that too often is missed entirely in the education of our American girls. In our increasingly intellectualized society, there is too little stress on the sound satisfactions there are in being able to put on the table an attractive, nutritious meal without strain. Perhaps, however it is encouraging to see that the kitchen, at one time compressed to a mere cubby hole, is now expanding warmly into the “family room” where the mother and family are together in the preparation of meals. The mother is no longer isolated.
I have such a kitchen myself, where my children sit and do their homework, look at television, listen to records, read by the fire in an atmosphere free of “don’ts.” Part of one wall is solid with cookbooks of every kind including some meant just for boys and girls.
My training in cooking began at about the age of six, but in my early teens, I was sent to school in Europe to the Institute Heubi in Lausanne Switzerland. There at the graduate school, the Villa, I studied home economics under expert tutelage before going on to college preparation at the secondary school, the Chateau.
This was doing it the very hard way indeed, for in the graduate school all of the girls spoke excellent French. In fact we were not permitted to speak any other language. I began my culinary notebook in French not knowing what I was writing. My cooking classes thus greatly depended on my home-trained ability in the kitchen, for I was there for a good three months without being able to talk with my instructors or with my fellow pupils. It was the only three months in my whole life in which I knew what it must be like to be both deaf and dumb.
In my school I learned not only haute cuisine, but all the arts of housekeeping, even to the pleating of nightgowns with a pleating iron. For us there were not shortcut, no scouring powder (we used brickdust), no canned, dehydrated, or frozen foods. Perhaps because of this training, I was once able to make a perfect zabaglione on a kerosene stove by the light of an oil lamp in a Virginia cabin!
We sometimes hear complaints that women spend too much time in the exchange of recipes, that this is a very trifling activity indeed. If this is so, then I am very guilty. Many of the recipes in this book came to me in exchange from friends all over the world and, have become part of my own cookery repertoire. When the routine of running house and office becomes irksome, I get out my recipe file and pull out one or more of these recipes that I have collected. As I knead my Irish soda bread (I often use the mix that is available–imported form Dunloaghaire now), I recall the morning that I literally hung by my heels to kiss the Blarney Stone in Cork. When I serve our fresh sweet corn, I fill the little individual butter dishes that I bought at the Vista Alegre porcelain plant in Portugal. When we prepare Swedish smorgasbord, my sons and I remember the lesson we learned in Stockholm–eat first the fish (herrings and seafoods), then the hot delicacies and meat, and finally the salads and cheese.
I know many people so frightened of entertaining that they have one or two standard company meals and these they serve forth every time they have guests. This sad poverty of cuisine is not for me. I like to adventure in the realm of food. I want my children to be able to accept a new dish, try it and, if possible, enjoy it as much as I do the serving of it.
Although I find the actual preparation of food–from scratch–interesting, creative and challenging, I by no means, as you will see in the pages of this cookbook, spurn the use of quick methods. The commercial cake mixes are wonderful and in most cases can be enjoyed even by the calorie-watcher. I love the idea of being able to pick up from the freezer department of the supermarket find sauces from Maxim’s in Paris, baby brussels sprouts quick-frozen in Holland, or pastry quick-frozen in wonderful Copenhagen.
The United States is a fine place for gourmets–for anyone who likes good food with or without having the technical knowledge of preparing it. Or for anyone with a penchant for the exotic. I was pleased when my then twelve-year-old spent some of his allowance on a jar of chocolate covered bees!
I hope that as you work from these pages with me, you will travel to many of the places I have been and enjoy the specialties of some of the fine restaurants where I have been a guest. Often where there is a very personal reason for my including a recipe in this collection, I have told you why in a footnote to the recipe.
My own training as a cook has been technical in a different way than is the technical training of a home economist in this country. I was, however, for many years a food editor and am very familiar with American cookery methods and the developments of food preparations in this country. However, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Miss Florence Brobeck who has tested these recipes in her capacity as a trained American home economist. A tyro in the kitchen can produce any recipe here successfully. The cooking time is exact and the number of portions are indicated. Possible difficulties in the more complex recipes are carefully described.
No cookbook fills all needs. If there were such a book I would have it and not the 300-odd books now in my collection. I have tried, however, in my own cookbook to compile one that will help the beginning cook and be a constant inspiration to the woman who must plan and produce three or more meals a day and meals for entertaining. There are things here that will challenge the very good cook indeed, but on the other hand there are many, many easy recipes for the cook who must hurry. The technical discussion on the purchase and preparations of certain foods are Miss Brobeck’s, the result of her own fine professional background and experience. I have learned much from this contribution of hers.
Like my etiquette book, this book has taken years of preparation. Its production as given me much pleasure. I hope that you will enjoy it, too.
Amy Vanderbilt
I know it’s a good bit to read but I hope you enjoyed the journey back in time. I really enjoyed the vision in the kitchen as a space where family would gather while the meals were being prepared. Oh how Ms. Vanderbilt would have loved our modern spaces.
xo–me
Tags: Just Amy
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Even though we stopped exchanging gifts a few years ago, I was surprised to have a few ‘stocking stuffers’ from my guy this year. Many stocking stuffers are nail polish, lip gloss or the like. All great treats in their own right. But mine were custom tailored to the things I love. I got this which is now sitting on my nightstand. Yes, I am a 10 year old boy at times. I also got a lovely collection of vintage Pennsylvania cookbooks. I was overjoyed when I was reading them because of all the unusual recipes and what many will feel are old-fashioned methods of cooking and baking.
