A fun and interesting cookbook written by a former actress and high-society wife of the man who introduced Smirnoff vodka to the greater United States. The cookbook itself is a fun mixture of early camp and curious recipes packaged in a thin layer of Shakespearean references and Elizabethan food lore. Mostly, you get the sense of optimism and general culinary explorations of an upper-class cadre who came of age during World War I, weathered the Depression, and prevailed in World War II and yet had not fully entered into another significant period of cultural change brought on by the Kennedy assasination, the struggle for Civil Rights, and the Vietnam War.
Overall, Jane Weeks Martin's book a bit of a delightful mess, but where else are you going to find Jaqueline Kennedy's Oyster Muffins, Walt Disney's very midwestern-style Chili and Beans, or dueling meatloaf recipes submitted by Pat Nixon and Jayne Mansfield?* "This celebrity-starred cookbook will prove as delightful a conversation piece in the living room as it is inspiring in the kitchen." We couldn't have said it better.
*As a note, Mansfield's recipe is a bit more voluptuous with her addition of sausage and seasonings and if that isn't a metaphor for the differences between the two women, I don't know what is.
