Rachel Laudan

Last week while I was thumbing through some of my books, I came across this lovely passage about whether cooking is a joy, a topic I’ve been kicking around for several weeks. For the non-Americans on the list, The Joy of Cooking was one of the two or three iconic American cookbooks from the 1930s [...]

Here’s a story about servants.  Brigid Keenen, wife of a British diplomat in waning years of the last century, wrote a memoir. Perhaps her particular kind of British humor does not appeal to everyone, though I just love it, but that’s not the point here.  The point is her story about servants and recipes. Newly [...]

Several commentators have asked about servants who stole. This is a special case of all situations where rich and poor live or work close together. Today shops report that their employees shoplift. So I’ll just make three observations about theft in the kitchen. 1. Kitchens were designed to prevent theft. When my parents moved into [...]