A Commonplace Book of Cookery: A Collection of Proverbs, Anecdotes, Opinions and Obscure Facts on Food, Drink, Cooks, Cooking, Dining, Diners & Dieters, dating from ancient times to the present

Commonplace books, observes M. F. K. Fisher in her preface to this collection, "are rarely compiled by commonplace people." Robert Grabhorn was a San Francsico fine printer and publisher who "also worked diligently at the arts of eating and drinking." Thanks to his lifelong habits of reading, clipping, and filing, his "fever for the printed word," we can, with him, "pluck gastronomical crumbs from off and from under the tables of the great, sub-great, superficial wits and thinkers of History."

A Commonplace Book of Cookery is a celebration of food and drink, a feast to be ravenously entered into or ceremoniously nibbled at, a banquet of offerings producing flavors of recognition and surprise, delight, wit, and wisdom. This tasteful edition is a facsimile of the limited edition produced by the Arion Press in 1975, as designed by Mr. Grabhorn's equally esteemed associate, Andrew Hoyem. A delicious book.