High Bonnet (1945)

by Idwal Jones

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350. 1st ed. Three titles from this chef. See entries.

kitchengardenbooks | May 2, 2009 |

High Bonnet is ostensibly the tale of Jean-Marie Gallois, a lowly Provencal who is thrust into the world of Parisian cuisine and ends up as the head chef of a famous restaurant. Really, though, this is a culinary bodice-ripper. Every page contains wonderful, flowery, over-the-top descriptions of food and eating. For example: "Freda ate robustly, washing pastry, meat, and asparagus down her full Doric throat with draughts of Montepulciano." "Marie staggered over with a tray laden with for mastodonic kidneys, whose ruby meat winked in the matrix of fat."

One of the funniest parts of the book is when the chefs find out about a discovery of Pleistocene musk-oxen preserved in ice in Siberia. One of their rich friends obtains some, along with various other food products discovered in archaeological digs. They then prepare a Pleistocene banquet with all the ancient foods.

The book got off to a bit of a slow start for me, but I'm glad I stuck with it. The descriptions of food are fantastic, and the chefs have some entertaining escapades. (

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carlym | Apr 12, 2009 |

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Canonical title

High Bonnet

Original title

Alternative titles

Original publication date

1945

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Awards and honors

Commonwealth Club of California Book Awards (Fiction, Silver, 1945)

Epigraph

Pupil: Good Master, many men have written largely on cookery, so either prove you're saying something original, or else don't tease me.
/ Cook: What I know I didn't learn in a brace of years, wearing the apron just by way of sport!

--Athenaeus, Banquet of the Learned

Dedication

To Phil Townsend Hanna, Esq., Homo Multarum Literarum, and Epicure Unpaunched

First words

The vender was again passing Xavier's cafe on the Toulon wharf with a basket of medlars on his head, a tuneful cry in his throat.

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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)

Disambiguation notice

1945 edition: High bonnet / by Idwal Jones; 2001 Modern Library edition has title: High bonnet : a novel of epicurean adventures / Idwal Jones ; introduction by Anthony Bourdain

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Modern Library Food

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Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0375757562, Paperback)

The high bonnet of Idwal Jones's book, published in 1945 and now reprinted by the Modern Library Food series, is the chef's toque, a symbol of his stature, of cooking itself. Achieving the high bonnet is the good fortune of the novel's Jean-Marie Gallois, a young confisseur (candy maker) from Provence who has earned an apprenticeship at Paris's famed Faisen d'Or restaurant. But Jean-Marie's ascension to glory is not the novel's central concern; revealing a world entirely devoted to food--getting it, eating it, and discussing it--is. In prose as sensually provocative as the dishes his characters enjoy, Jones acquaints readers with a world dedicated to pursuing pleasure at the table and the craft that makes it, in its culinary dimension at least, most possible. The joy and art of High Bonnet is that its readers instantly ally themselves with the characters--with their mania for dining high, low, and outrageous (on the perfect Potage Crécy and prehistoric muskox, for example). It's an exciting feat.

Early in the book, we meet the Baroness, who eats "with eyes half drooped, like a pigeon's in flight, allowing [a] croustade to splinter under her excellent teeth." Jones's splendid creation is also responsible for sending Jean-Marie to his apprenticeship, and thus to our encountering a Vietnamese anarchist; Guido, the roguish Italian kitchen expediter; a dwarf rôtissuer; an alcoholic waiter; a saffron-stashing sauce master, and many more extraordinary characters. Meals are enjoyed and stories are told, like that of a man "ruined by a dish," the creator of a legendary curry recipe who falls disastrously from great heights when he can no longer obtain the dish's "secret" ingredient. A philosophy is also put before us: "Never expect a perfect dinner to come from a clean kitchen," says a character; "as well as expect one from a laboratory." In our own age of mass cooking, it's particularly alluring to follow the adventures of Jean-Marie and company. High Bonnet is a window on a lost world and human activity that today cries for the book's vital passion. --Arthur Boehm

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 25 Jan 2013 04:01:05 -0500)

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