Fine preserving: M.F.K. Fisher's annotated edition of Catherine Plagemann's cookbook

National Review, April 10, 1987 by Nika Hazelton

Fine Preserving: M. F. K. Fisher's Annotated Edition of Catherine Plagemann's Cookbook

(Aris Books,144 pp., $17.95). M. F. K. Fisher, America's best, most amusing, and most literate food and drink authority, tells you how she uses this splendid 1967 classic. The book reads as if you were sitting in her kitchen listening to her talk. It makes for about the nicest perusing I've come across in a long time.

Meanwhile, I would like to ask whytoday's cookbooks--or at least those I've been writing about today--have to be so hefty? With the exception of Fine Preserving, these volumes are barely liftable, let alone readily usable in the kitchen. Even a paperback like Fancy Pantry weighs far too much. While Aris Books is to be commended for the presentation of Fine Preserving, the conspicuous waste represented by the other titles is, to put it kindly, ridiculous.