Love and Kisses and a Halo of Truffles: Letters to Helen Evans Brown, by James Beard, edited by John Ferrone (New York: Little, Brown, 1994)

Love and Kisses and a Halo of Truffles is an odd sort of book.  I’d seen it mentioned in numerous other books and, even though it’s over fifteen years old now, still wanted to check it out.  I’m glad I did.  As John Ferrone explains in the introduction, after James Beard’s death in 1985 Ferrone was given access to a huge stash of letters Beard wrote to Helen Evans Brown, a close friend, between 1952 (when their friendship began) and 1964 (when Brown died).  Excerpts from about 300 of the letters are reprinted in the book.  Thus, the book is a conversation between the two food writers, although it’s generally one-sided, as almost all the excerpts are from Beard’s letters, not Brown’s.

And what’s in those excerpts?  Lots and lots of talk about food in the 1950s and 1960s.  The book is a bit confusing to begin since not much context is provided other than brief footnotes explaining who people are, but this is the kind of book where the individual players aren’t that important: rather, what comes across is Beard’s life, lived through food.

Beard clearly loved good food, and could both cook and eat with the best of them.  Dishes and ingredients roll across the page, making it difficult to read the book on an empty stomach.  For example, while vacationing in France, he “lunched magnificently on a hot pâté of sweetbreads, truffles and a good deal of grated carrot in a delicate crust.  Then an omble chevalier…and a chicken with morilles, gathered this morning on the grounds.  I am eating only asparagus and an omelet tonight….I swear I am not going to eat a thing on the ship but eggs and vegetables and fruit.” (page 210)

A couple of things come across about Beard’s life through these letters, in addition to his love for food.  For one thing, that love brought him considerable problems, especially with his health and weight, as he visited numerous hospitals during this time period, usually leaving the hospital with orders from his doctor to lose weight and stick to a diet.  For another thing, especially in the 1950s, Beard was extremely concerned with money, taking on assignments and jobs that added considerable amounts of stress that, then, sent him to the hospital.  His life during this time was a whirlwind of traveling and writing: visits to Europe, the west coast, and travels throughout America (he was based in New York City); new cookbooks, revised cookbooks, a book of memoirs; and jobs cooking for restaurants, catered affairs, and creating new products for companies like Nestle and French’s (the mustard people).  Oh, and he also started a cooking school.  The man was busy.

The book is much closer to a diary or journal than a biography, so if you’re looking for a history of James Beard you should look elsewhere.  However, it does have a lot of interesting tidbits about the man like how, after reading that rhubarb tops were eaten as a vegetable in France, he bought a bunch of rhubarb and ate the tops as a salad.  After the meal he sat down to read about rhubarb, only to “read that rhubarb tops were toxic and could be fatal!…All night my whole body smelled like rhubarb cooked without sugar, and I was sicker than I have ever been for an hour or two in the middle of the night.  I highly recommend that you leave rhubarb tops alone.” (page 261) Words of wisdom from someone who’s been there.

The book also comes with a number of recipes mentioned in the text so you can make some of the many delicious dishes Beard describes.