Books: A Dish Is a Dish Is a Dish

THE ALICE B. TOKLAS COOK BOOK (288 pp.)—Alice B. Toklas—Harper ($4).

It is reasonably certain that no man ever said to Alice B. Toklas: "If you could only cook!" Small, wiry and quite bereft of feminine charm, she was once cattily described as "the lady with the melancholy nose." But cook she could—or at least she went into the kitchen armed with glorious recipes.

For close to 40 years Alice was companion, housekeeper and quite often chief cook and bottle washer for Fellow U.S. Expatriate Gertrude Stein, who made her name a literary household word...