Found Meals of the Lost Generation : Recipes and Anecdotes from 1920s Paris

Paris in the 1920s was alive with writers, artists, musicians, and dancers. It was here that Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Langston Hughes, Man Ray, and Josephine Baker came to create and to congregate. And when they got together, it was often for a meal.
In Found Meals of the Lost Generation, Suzanne Rodriguez-Hunter has brought thirty such gatherings to life: she describes the setting, the guest list, the conversation, and, of course, the food - providing recipes for every dish. The reader-cook can join Ernest Hemingway and F.Scott Fitzgerald for escargots a la Bourguignon, Sylvia Beach and James Joyce for ham braised in Madeira, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas for jugged hare, John Dos Passos for clam risotto, and Jean Cocteau for afternoon tea. Side dishes, desserts, and suggestions for the appropriate wines and liqueurs are also included. The result will delight lovers of cooking and literature alike, and make for some memorable meals.

Smitten by a long-ago era, Rodriguez-Hunter offers what she calls an "edible time machine," or a re-creation of the meals of American expatriates in Paris. Chapters focus on famous couples of the day and the food they shared with the rest of their thriving community. The reader roams from the staid tea of Gertrude Stein's home to the sensual overload offered by artist Man Ray and his muse, Kiki, and from the cycle races of Hemingway to the salon of Picasso, where at a joyous celebration for an aging Matisse, a donkey wanders in and eats Alice B. Toklas's hat. The meals themselves, however, retain little of their creators' flair. Surprisingly bland entries for cocoa and boiled potatoes compete with far too many recipes that call for rabbit. Additionally, the recipes are laid out in paragraphs, making the food easier to read about than to cook. But Rodriguez-Hunter ably captures the excitement and romance of the period, and her description of Langston Hughes bidding farewell to his lover over heavy cream and tiny strawberries is particularly moving.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Lost Generation, precursor to the sixties generation, has held its lure inside and outside of literary circles for a very long time. In this curious hybrid of cookbook and literary history, the legends surrounding Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stein, Picasso, and so many other artistic types are conveyed by anecdotes and the author's "found meals." The feast begins with a party for Rousseau, put together with little money and a lot of bacchanalian style. Some of the meals are more authentic than others, and none is adjusted for today's austere tastes. But who wouldn't be delighted by Alice B. Toklas' jugged hare with boiled potatoes and appropriate red wine; Jimmy the Bartender's aphrodisiacal mixture of Pernod, Amer-Picon, and kirsch; or Les Halles' onion soup at dawn. The bits of news, particularly about the lesser-known Lost--Harry Crosby, Kiki, Natalie Barney, and Robert McAlmon, all giants among the other members of the group--are revealing. All in all, it's quite a taste for the time, a portable picnic. Bonnie Smothers