Culinary historian Anne Willan "has melded her passions for culinary history, writing, and teaching into her fascinating new book" (Chicago Tribune) that traces the origins of American cooking through profiles of twelve influential women-from Hannah Woolley in the mid-1600s to Fannie Farmer, Julia Child, and Alice Waters-whose recipes and ideas changed the way we eat. Anne Willan, multi-award-winning culinary historian, cookbook writer, teacher, and founder of La Varenne Cooking School in Paris, explores the lives and work of women cookbook authors whose essential books have defined cooking over the past three hundred years. Beginning with the first published cookbook by Hannah Woolley in 1661 to the early colonial days to the transformative popular works by Fannie Farmer, Irma Rombauer, Julia Child, Edna Lewis, Marcella Hazan, and up to Alice Waters working today. Willan offers a brief biography of each influential woman, highlighting her key contributions, seminal books, and representative dishes. The book features fifty original recipes-as well as updated versions Willan has tested and modernized for the contemporary kitchen. Women in the Kitchen is an engaging narrative moves seamlessly moves through the centuries to help readers understand the ways cookbook authors inspire one another, that they in part owe their places in history to those who came before them, and how they forever change the culinary landscape. This "informative and inspiring book is a reminder that the love of delicious food and the care and preparation that goes into it can create a common bond" (Booklist).

This gorgeously illustrated volume began as notes on the collection of cookbooks and culinary images gathered by renowned cookbook author Anne Willan and her husband Mark Cherniavsky. From the spiced sauces of medieval times to the massive roasts and ragouts of Louis XIV's court to elegant eighteenth-century chilled desserts, "The Cookbook Library" draws from renowned cookbook author Anne Willan's and her husband Mark Cherniavsky's antiquarian cookbook library to guide readers through four centuries of European and early American cuisine. As the authors taste their way through the centuries, describing how each cookbook reflects its time, Willan illuminates culinary crosscurrents among the cuisines of England, France, Italy, Germany, and Spain. A deeply personal labor of love, "The Cookbook Library" traces the history of the recipe and includes some of their favorites.

Anne Willan demystified classic French culinary technique for regular people who love food. Her legendary La Varenne Cooking School--in its original location in Paris and later in its longtime home in Burgundy--trained chefs, food writers and home cooks. Under Willan's cheerful, no-nonsense instruction, anyone could learn to truss a chicken, make a bernaise, or loft a souffle.

In "One Souffle at a Time," Willan tells her story and the story of the food-world greats--including Julia Child, James Beard, Simone Beck, Craig Claiborne, Richard Olney, and others--who changed how the world eats and who made cooking "fun." She writes about how a sturdy English girl from Yorkshire made it not only to the stove, but to France, and how she overcame the exceptionally closed male world of French cuisine to found and run her school. Willan's story is warm and rich, funny and fragrant with the smells of the country cooking of France. It's also full of the creative culinary ferment of the 1970s--a decade when herbs came back to life and freshness took over, when the seeds of our modern day obsession with food and ingredients were sown.

Tens of thousands of students have learned from Willan, not just at La Varenne, but through her large, ambitious "Look & Cook" book series and twenty-six-part PBS program. Now "One Souffle at a Time" --which features fifty of her favorite recipes, from Coquille St. Jacques to Chocolate Snowball--brings Willan's own story of her life to the center of the banquet table.