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Wolfert confesses that she has "always been seduced by dishes off the beaten track," and prepares such southwest enticements as scallops in tangerine sauce, straw potato cake stuffed with braised leeks, compote of rabbit with prunes, trout with mountain-cured ham and bacon, mint parfait filled with chocolate mousse, roast figs, priest's omelet (a not so monastic dish with livers, kidneys, mushrooms and Madeira) and Catalan salad; the latter is described by one writer as being "like a Spanish inn. It accepts everyone and everything it can hold." The words apply equally well to this entire regional cuisine. Wolfert has preserved it magically, like a confit between covers.
The ever evolving nature of eating and entertaining is the theme of Eliane Amé-Leroy Carley's Classics from a French Kitchen (Crown; $24.95). A niece of the eminent French historian Maxime Leroy, Carley spent 14 years researching gastronomic lore. She brings a wealth of anecdote and historic insight to her urbane collection of more than 300 recipes, some of which were given to her mother by the great Auguste Escoffier. They are not the oversauced, cholesterol-laden dishes usually associated with haute cuisine, but rather a selection of those basic Romano-Gallic admixtures of flavor, ingenuity and stirring skills that date at least as far back as the first recorded omelet (said to have been whipped up by Lucullus from an ostrich egg in 90 B.C.).
Carley's recipes are uncomplicated and easy to prepare, thanks to meticulous instructions and many of what the French call trucs, or tips; for example, stirring in cornstarch or arrowroot to ensure curdle-proof hollandaise sauce. She lives in the U.S. and prescribes no ingredients that are not easily available. Classics includes eleven sole dishes, more than 20 soups and some 40 sauces. Highlights: veal provençale in aspic; cabbage leaves stuffed with ham, chestnuts and cream; noisettes of pork with prunes and cream; Jean-Jacques Rousseau's beef daube; soufflé crēpes with Grand Marnier; molded raspberry ice cream; and the authentic French fries (they must be fried twice).
Charming as well as practical, Classics contains a bouillabaisse of historical tidbits. Charles de Gaulle, for instance, was so fond of soup that he insisted on a different one each day; he also once demanded: "How can you govern a country that has 346 cheeses?" Here is Victor Hugo on turkey: "This is a ridiculous animal. There is maybe a little too much for one, but certainly not enough for two!" As early as 1653, Cookbook Author François Pierre de La Varenne noted 16 recipes for scrambled eggs. For centuries, until the 18th, royal and upper-class meals were always accompanied by singing. It was called vaudeville.
Virtually all of the world's distinctive cuisines boast soups and stews worth singing about. With some great dishes, such as minestrone, couscous, Belgian waterzooie and Greek soúppa pashalini, it is hard to say where soup ends and stew begins. Whatever their appellations, they rate star billing at today's dinner table. These body-and soul-warming concoctions are appetizingly assembled by Dorothy Ivens in Main-Course Soups and Stews (Harper & Row; $15.95), along with appropriate menus in which to lodge them.