Hall of Fame: The French Menu Cookbook

The guest nominates Richard Olney for the Trapped History Hall of Fame—a name most people have never heard, but one that sits at the top of nearly every list of the greatest cookbooks ever written. When she started cooking professionally in her early twenties, her head chefs gave her a reading list and told her: "If you're going to cook well, you need to read well." That list included Claudia Roden, Paula Wolfert, Jane Grigson, Elizabeth David, Alan Davidson, and Richard Olney. His book, The French Menu Cookbook, is widely considered the best cookbook ever written.

The Romance of Provence in the 1960s

What makes Olney's work transcend ordinary cookbooks is not the recipes themselves, but the world he conjures around them. The guest describes reading his book and cooking from it as an exercise in imagination: "I just imagine the glamour of Provence in the 60s and drinking gallons of rosé and having people around in my garden and everyone being really romantic and gorgeous and the sun is dappling under the olive tree." Olney was an American living in France who cultivated a particular kind of life—a cool house in Provence, an open-top car, gorgeous people coming to stay for weekends. His writing sells not just a recipe but "the romance and the beauty and excitement of a perfect lunch in Provence."