Allegra Goodman - The Cookbook Collector

“Welcome,” he said, noting her cloth bag. She had come just twice over the past nine months, and each time she had brought an ordinary book. A first-edition Fannie Farmer , and an old Mastering the Art of French Cooking . He had offered only ten dollars for the last, and she had left Yorick’s in a huff. Then he concluded that, when it came to her uncle’s estate, Sandra had already sold him the crown jewels, such as they were. “Another cookbook for me?”

“No.” She pushed her long hair back over her shoulders, a gesture surprisingly young for a woman so gray.

“May I help you find something?”

“No.” She stood quite still before him. “What I would like,” she said, and she spoke with precision, “is to take you to the house.”

“To your house!”

“My uncle’s house,” she amended. “The house he left me. I’m interested in an appraisal.”

Why now? he thought. And why him? Did she want a second opinion? Or was he the first? Just how desperate was she?

“Some of the books are valuable.”

Let me be the judge of that, he thought.

“Some are unique.”

“How many are there?”

“Currently,” she said, “eight hundred and seventy-three.”

The number startled him, because it was bigger than he expected, and more exact.

“Sorting out that many will take time.”

“That’s just it; time is of the essence,” she told him. “Would it be possible for you to come this afternoon?”

With some humor, he considered his empty store. “Sure.”

“I’ll show you.”

“I’d have to lock up,” he said. Jess should have been there to cover for him.

He stuck a Post-it on the glass shop door. “Back in an hour.”

Then he dashed off instructions for Jess, who had a key. He took his fountain pen and covered a note card quickly with his small tight cursive:

J.—I assume you’re writing a new theory of moral sentiments or testifying against Pacific Lumber. In either case, the books have not been shelved. Take care of that and break down the boxes!—G.

They took George’s car, because Sandra didn’t drive, and they drove through Elmwood with its beetle-browed old bungalows. Towering hedges of eugenia nearly obscured Sandra’s home from Russell Street. Her uncle must have bought the place for about a dollar, thought George, as he picked his way through a jungle of ornamental plum, live oak, and Australian tea trees, trailing their branches luxuriantly. There were figs and lemons, roses and giant rhododendrons, all overrun with thorny blackberry canes.

“Watch out for the cat,” Sandra told George as he followed her up peeling steps to the front porch.

She gestured for George to step in close behind her as she unlocked the door. Like a furry missile, the black-and-gray cat launched himself, trying to escape outdoors. George blocked him with his legs. Sandra scooped him up in her arms. “Down, Geoffrey,” she ordered, as if chastising a dog, and she dumped the animal onto a couch draped in dark green slipcovers. Geoffrey jumped onto the back of this well-protected piece of furniture and glared at her with furrowed brow and narrowed eyes.

The living room was stuffed with armchairs, end tables and bookcases, stacks of magazines and yellowed newspapers. Empty antique birdcages filled the front bay window. Abandoned pagodas. Flanking the dining table, open cabinets displayed bowls and goblets of dusty ruby-colored cut glass. A phalanx of botanical engravings adorned the walls. No bright tulips or orchids here. The engravings were all pale green and gray, portraying and anatomizing moss and lichens. Odd choices, George thought. Geoffrey purred, and instinctively, as he leaned over the green couch for a closer look, George touched the cat’s soft fur.

“He bites,” said Sandra.

Too late. George gasped as the cat nipped his finger.

“I warned you.” Sandra’s voice rose.

The wound looked like two pinpricks, the puncture marks of a tiny vampire.

“I told you. I said watch out for the cat. He’s a very …”

She disappeared into the next room, and George followed her into a kitchen that smelled of bananas and wheat germ and rotting plums. The paint on the cabinets was chipped, the countertops stacked with dishes and small New Age appliances: rice cooker, yogurt maker, fruit dehydrator. Little cacti lined the windowsills. Prickly cacti, hairy cacti; spiky, round, bulbous, hostile little plants of every kind.

“He was my uncle’s cat,” Sandra explained. “He was abused when he was younger. My uncle found him and took him in, and then when my uncle passed …”

Ignoring this sob story, George marched to the sink.

“He felt abandoned,” Sandra said.

George turned on the tap and a cloud of fruit flies rose from the drain. Disgusted, he held his finger under the running water.

“Let me get you some iodine,” said Sandra. “Let me …” Her voice trailed off again. “You do still want to see the books?”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

She had turned her back to open the kitchen cabinets. For a moment he thought she was searching for the iodine, and then he saw them. Leather-bound, cloth-bound, quartos and folios, books of every size. The cabinets were stacked with books. Not a dish or cup in sight. Only books. Sandra bent and opened the lower cabinets. Not a single pot or pan. Just books. She stood on a chair to reach the cabinet above the refrigerator. Books there as well.

George stepped away from the sink without noticing that he had left the water running. Injury forgotten, he gazed in awe. He leaned against the counter and stared at bindings of hooped leather, red morocco, black and gold. Sandra opened a drawer, and there lay Le Livre de Cuisine . She opened the drawer below and he took out The Accomplisht Cook: or, The Art and Mystery of Cookery . He opened the book at random: Section XIII: The First Section for dressing of fish, Shewing divers ways, and the most excellent, for dressing Carps, either Boiled, Stewed, Broiled, Roasted, or Baked, &c . He had never tried to roast a carp. Take a live carp, draw and wash it, and take away the gall, and milt, or spawn; then make a pudding with some grated manchet, some almond-paste, cream, currans, grated nutmeg, raw yolks of eggs, sugar, caraway-seed candied, or any peel, some lemon and salt, then make a stiff pudding and … The cook in him wanted to read on, but the collector was distracted by the array in cabinets beneath, above, below.

Where should he begin? How could he approach, let alone assess a trove like this? Books like these would take a specialist, a Lowenstein or Wheaton. The sheer numbers were overwhelming. The antiquity. And the strangeness of it all, the perversity of substituting cookbooks for utensils, domestic treatises for pots and pans, words for cups, recipes for spoons and spatulas and cutlery. Still cradling The Accomplisht Cook , George tried to comprehend the open cabinets and drawers before him. He did not make a sound until Sandra opened the oven. Then a cry escaped. Books piled even here, arrayed in boxes on cookie sheets! The collector had converted oven racks to stacks.

“Where did he find these?” George murmured to Sandra.

She shook her head. “After the War,” she said, “when he was young. But he kept them in boxes until he retired, and then slowly he unpacked them, and shelved them here. He didn’t cook.”

George knelt before the open oven. He slid the top rack out partway and took a flat box in his two hands, keeping it level, as one might support a cake. “Oh, my God,” he murmured. Inside the box lay La Cuisine Classique , volume two, bound in worn red morocco.

He opened the book, and scraps of paper fluttered to the floor.