Turning the pages,

my excitement—and my pleasure at having discovered such a jewel—grew: A recipe for Sour Cream Hot Cakes by Charlie Chaplin? A Chicken Burgundy Style from Katharine Hepburn? A Crab Soup from Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt—Eleanor?! Another from Salvador Dalì? A Pineapple Sherbet from Elizabeth Arden? It seemed as though every other recipe had a famous name attached to it. Unbelievable as it felt, there it all was, in black ink on slightly yellowed paper, hidden behind a simple yet elegant blue-checkered cover—it was the 1949 edition’s, Bill explained, and quite different from the 1940 original, which he assured me was beautiful. I had to have it.

After a while,

Bill must have sensed that I was beginning to feel overwhelmed by his offerings—there was so much to discover, to learn, and so many pages to turn! With what I later realized was his typical graciousness, Bill turned to a couple of low shelves near a corner. These were vintage cookbooks, he explained, another passion of his. He pulled out Spécialités de la Maison and encouraged me to look through it, saying something like: “You’re French—you’ll appreciate this. It’s really quite a fun book: All kinds of great people from the ’40s are in there, and all to help France during the war.”