SOME NOT VERY USEFUL ADVICE FROM JAMES BEARD

Last weekend, I found in a bookstore’s 50¢ stack the only James Beard cookbook I had never before seen, How to Eat Better for Less Money. I was hoping that this book, written in 1954 with Sam Aaron, the longtime proprietor of the great wine store Sherry-Lehmann, would offer some pertinent tips for these low-budget times, some forgotten wisdom from the less profligate days of yore. But perhaps I should have taken as a warning the fact that the cover image is of a crown roast of lamb and no less than twelve bottles of wine. Such an image does not scream “frugality.”

This, clearly, was one of those hodgepodge books that Beard threw together to make a quick buck. While there are some nifty-thrifty suggestions, such making the most of cheap offcuts like pigs’ ears (“Simmer them until tender in salted water with an onion stuck with 2 cloves, 1 carrot, a bouquet garni and some peppercorns. Drain. Serve them hot with a Vinaigrette Sauce or lemon butter”) and making an appetizer of “tiny hot Baby Reuben Sandwiches,” How to Eat Better… is basically a drab compendium of boilerplate recipes and boilerplate advice to the effect of “Buy the best-quality ingredients that your budget allows.”

Most curious of all is a passage on Scotch. While the book’s Wine and Spirits section was largely the bailiwick of Aaron, I suspect that the following came not from him but Beard, who preferred a tall glass of Glenlivet to a bottle of wine: “To serve a superb premium Scotch at low cost, buy six bottles of a low-priced blended Scotch and one bottle of Smith’s Glenlivet or Glenfiddich unblended all-malt Scotch. Pour the contents of the seven bottles into a container and mix them. Refill the seven bottles and put on your own label, which might read ‘John Smith’s Personal Selection.’” The fat bastard was advocating watering down single malt with blended whiskey and passing it off as premium!

More useful, or at least in touch with reality, is 93-year-old Clara Cannucciara, the star of the online cooking show Great Depression Cooking with Clara. Her simple recipes and tips, recalled from a young adulthood in which she just barely got by, are the kind you can try out on your own as soon as you’ve finished watching. I also like how, in the episode about Pepper & Egg sandwiches, she boasts that she’s never needed a cutting board, which she considers a “convenience.”

—David Kamp