The Books: Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink; edited by David Remnick; ‘The Secret Ingredient’, by M.F.K. Fisher

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Next up on the essays shelf:

Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink, edited by David Remnick

Secret Ingredients is a collection of food writing from The New Yorker. I love these collections. So far, we have excerpted from the following collections: Life Stories, The Fun of It, and The New Gilded Age. There are a couple more collections out there that I do not own, sports writing, humor writing, fiction.

I’m not a foodie, but I love this collection because 1. it gives snapshots of different eras, 2. the writing is great, of course.

M.F.K. Fisher is one of the most famous names in food writing, and her main home was The New Yorker, although she published many books. I was mainly introduced to her by the stunning profile written of Fisher by Joan Acocella, a favorite of mine. It made me so curious. I still haven’t read a lot of M.F.K. Fisher but there are three pieces included in Secret Ingredients, and of course she kind of gave the collection its title.

What I am struck by in these pieces (one about recipes, one about tripe, and one about casseroles) is how passionate her writing is. It’s wild. Untamed. You can feel her love of food in a way that is totally accessible, often hilarious. It’s not a how-to, these pieces, although some recipes are involved. One of the things that is striking here is that her voice, that so-important quality every writer must have, is her own. It’s a unique voice. You would recognize it in a lineup. Now what is it that makes M.F.K. Fisher’s voice unique? I think it may come from her outlook, which was at the same time cosmopolitan and small-town practical. But I think it also comes from the vast interior of her life, where she loved, lived, imagined, planned, experimented, thought, dreamed. Seriously, that is what I feel in her writing. She’s writing about casseroles, but what I hear is a real woman talking to me. If you think that’s easy, then you’re probably not a writer. So many people write in other people’s voices. The vast majority of writers write in other people’s voices. Of course a little tributes, Joycean flourishes there, Hemingway blunt-ness there, is inevitable and also awesome. But someone who can express herself as she is, and know deep down that she doesn’t need to be anybody else … You know, these are the writers that really get somewhere.

The following piece is called “The Secret Ingredient” and it was published in 1968.

It’s about excellent home cooks, the ladies who are not famous, who bring something to the church supper and everyone goes bad-shit-crazy over it, and beg for the recipe. The cook hands over the recipe, but when you try it at home, it doesn’t come out quite so well. What is the trick? What is the secret? My grandmother on the O’Malley side was a cook like that. She made cinnamon rolls that I still dream over. Her Easter hams were masterpieces. My mother tells funny stories of asking my grandmother, “So how do you make such-and-such” and my grandmother, who never used recipes or cookbooks, would come back with completely un-follow-able recipes. “You just throw that in the pan and then cook until it looks right …”

M.F.K. Fisher celebrates these ladies. And their mustard pickles, and their determination, and their brilliance. Not to mention the generosity, the desire to feed others and feed them well.

Here is an excerpt that gives a great feel for what Fisher is up to, and her outlook – not only on this topic but on life. I love her writing. I need to read more!

Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink, edited by David Remnick; ‘The Secret Ingredient’, by M.F.K. Fisher

People like Bertie – and even my honest mother – are increasingly rare, and I have a dismal feeling that they may soon disappear completely. It is not so much a question of their supplies as it is of their own unquestioning demand for quality. The things they used in their recipes were not hard to grow, or buy, and while they bowed to seasonal riches and made pickles when the vegetables were at their best, because that is the way they had to, we can buy zucchini and beans and even green tomatoes the year round in the supermarkets. We can assemble everything even cryptic directions call for, from vinegar to turmeric and, with a little effort, Crouse & Blackwell’s Chow Chow (and none other!) But do we? Why bother? Why clutter the icebox with a couple of jars of chilled zucchini? Who wants a dozen bottles of mustard pickles sitting around? Who has the time, when you come right down to it, to fuss with such maneuvers? So-and-so is almost as good, and a lot less trouble.

There was an interesting proof of this conjecture lately in our town, when the second of two birthday parties was given for an honorable lady of ninety-eight. Ten years before, when we celebrated her comparatively youthful anniversary, we did special honor to her by blackmailing another friend of almost the same age to make hundreds of her famous sand tarts to eat with the punch. They were delicate thin little wafers, light and crisp and not the classical sand tart at all, and for decades her recipe for them was her sternly guarded secret. Perhaps it was age that softened her pride, for when I discreetly and admiringly asked if perhaps a hint of old-fashioned lemon extract might be the Secret Ingredient, she gave me a pleased nod – and later the recipe! On it she wrote at the end, “… and 1/4 teaspoon of ???” – our private joke.

So the ten years passed, and when the time came to deputize a few of us to supply soppets for the ninety-eighth-birthday punch, I proudly produced the famous sand-tart recipe, feeling sure that the old lady who had not been able to reach that age would never begrudge it in honor of the one who had. But nobody had time enough to follow it – or, rather, it was mutually and immediately vetoed in favor of a wonderful new trick (just as good!) that involved packaged mixes of both cake and custard, frozen lemon juice, and sweet sherry. “Really fun to make … so quick and easy … and all you do is slice it.”

That is the end of the story. Or is it? Where are the witches of yesteryear, the strange old women with their dogged involvement, their loyalty to true flavor and changeless quality? If at times they protected their “secrets” to the point of knavery, at least they had the courage to stay passionate about it. Perhaps that was the Secret Ingredient: the blind strength of timeless passion.

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5 Responses to The Books: Secret Ingredients: The New Yorker Book of Food and Drink; edited by David Remnick; ‘The Secret Ingredient’, by M.F.K. Fisher

  1. Desirae says:

    “My mother tells funny stories of asking my grandmother, “So how do you make such-and-such” and my grandmother, who never used recipes or cookbooks, would come back with completely un-follow-able recipes. “You just throw that in the pan and then cook until it looks right …” ”

    My sister is this kind of cook. I asked her for a recipe for this amazing lemon-stuffed chicken she made and she puzzled over it for fifteen minutes, completely cranky with me the whole time because I made her write it down. She kept saying, “I don’t know why I can’t just tell you.”

    I made the chicken later and it was very good. But not as good as hers.

  2. Kate says:

    How do I not know about this book! Must find! Thank you Sheila.

  3. Fiddlin Bill says:

    I recommend highly Ms Fisher’s essay on fresh pan-fried brook trout, French style.

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