Amazing where 47 years can take us and yet we are still living off the convenience of packaged foods. This photograph is included in the North Carolina State University Special Digital collection.
A couple of weeks ago I wandered into the Reader's Corner on Hillsborough Street and picked up a worn copy of a book by Henri-Paul Pellaprat. This particular book was designed in the late 1960's to teach French cookery to the American housewife. Pellaprat, who was heralded as "one of the outstanding chefs and cookery teachers of all time" spent many years teaching at the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris. For thirty years his book, Le Nouveau Guide Culinaire, was considered the bible of everyday cooking in France.
In his genius, Pellaprat rewrote Le Nouveau, providing a simplified version of French cooking techniques for American women. From this book, one could learn to prepare eggs "nearly 50 ways' or other dinner ideas for those brave enough to attempt one of the twelve hundred watered-down classical French recipes (some of which are illustrated in 80 full-color photographs). Chapters include ideas for anything from menu planning to aspics or perhaps a Monday dinner of frogs' legs: fried, frittered, or sauteed with herbs. Clearly recipes for families with a more adventurous palate. Pellaprat recommended that family meals should consist of three or four courses.
Everyday French Cooking promises to make "fine everyday cooking a part of the American national sensibility, as it is in France".
