Shortly after Gertrude Stein’s death, the publication of "The Alice B. Toklas’ Cookbook" turned its usually very reserved author into a celebrity: the book was both a memoir and a cookbook, and it was met with such a great success, that the publisher asked the author to write a second one.
Ms. Toklas obliged, and wrote both "Aromas & Flavours of Past and Present", and her own autobiography "What is Remembered", but neither of the two reached the same fortune. Toklas had very little control over her publications, and always considered her second cookbook something she could not really be proud of, mainly because it was heavily edited by a magazine editor, and she did not like the result.
"The Alice B. Toklas’ Cookbook" was the first original project Alice Toklas embarked on, after the editing and the publication of the works by Gertrude Stein that were still unpublished at the time of Stein’s death. The idea of a cookbook had been discussed with Stein during the years, but had never came to fruition before. The text of the "Cookbook" is examined as well as the relationship between the two women, a relationship which nourished Toklas’ writing, albeit Stein’s absence.
