To set before the king
Subtitle: Katharina Schratt's festive recipes
By: edited by Gertrud Graubart Champe ; translated by Paula von Haimberger Arno in collaboration with chef Louis Szathmáry ; foreword by David E. Schoonover.
Contributors: Champe, Gertrud Graubart.; Arno, Paula von Haimberger.; Szathmáry, Louis.
Series: The Iowa Szathmáry culinary arts series
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: Iowa City, Iowa
Language: eng
Number of pages: 225
Subjects: Schratt, Katharina, 1855-1940.; Cookery, Austrian.; Cookery, Hungarian.
Description: In the 1970s, renowned chef and cookbook collector Louis Szathmary purchased a notebook written in German and dated 1905, containing more than two hundred recipes for soups, appetizers, main dishes, and a wealth of desserts, ices, and punches. This kitchen notebook, a concrete remnant from the paradoxical world of turn-of-the-century Vienna, belonged to a woman who played an extraordinary role in her society: actress Katharina Schratt, lavishly admired by crowned heads, industrialists, artists, composers and Franz Joseph I, emperor of Austria and king of Hungary. Schratt was his friend, companion, and confidante for thirty-two years, and these are the foods she served in her home. To Set before the King is really three books in one, Gertrud Champe has written an entertaining biography of Schratt and her glittering world. The carefully translated recipes themselves, from Little Croustades a la Talleyrand to Goulash a la Andrassy to Gingerbread a l'Elise are either comfortable and homey to soothe the highly regimented emperor or elegant and sophisticated to suit the palates of Schratt's more vivacious friends. Finally, working from Schratt's tantalizing aide-memoire, Chef Louis Szathmary has created almost a hundred updated Austro-Hungarian recipes that will bring the world of this European metropolis to the tables of today's cooks.
Notes: Translated from the German.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 46-48) and index.