Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Volume 2) (Revised Edition) by Julia Child, Simone Beck, Sidonie Coryn (Illustrator); 1970/2009. Hardcover. (F&C)

This second volume enables Americans, working with American ingredients, in American kitchens, to achieve those incomparable flavors and aromas that bring up a rush of memories—of lunch at a country inn in Provence, of an evening at a great Paris restaurant, of the essential cooking of France.

Among its many • the first authentic, successful recipe ever devised for making real French bread—the long, crunchy, yeasty, golden loaf that is like no other bread in texture and flavor—with American all-purpose flour and in an American home oven;• soups from the garden, chowders and bisques from the sea—including great fish stews from Provence, Normandy, and Burgundy; • meats from country kitchens to haute cuisine, in master recipes that demonstrate the special art of French meat cookery;• chickens poached (thirteen ways) and sauced;• vegetables alluringly combined and restored to a place of honor on the menu;• a lavish array of desserts, from the deceptively simple to the absolutely splendid.

But perhaps the most remarkable achievement of this volume is that it will make Americans actually more expert than their French contemporaries in two supreme areas of baking and charcuterie. In France one can turn to the local bakery for fresh and expertly baked bread, or to neighborhood charcuterie for pâtés and terrines and sausages. Here, most of us have no choice but to create them for ourselves. And in this book we are given instructions so clear, so carefully tested, that now any American cook can make specialties that have hitherto been obtainable only from France’s professional chefs and bakers. And the many drawings—five times as many as in Volume One—are demonstrations in themselves, making the already clear instructions doubly clear.