I would have sworn that I had posted this wonderful cookbook before but can’t find it anywhere, so here it is, in all it’s glory!
The Nero Wolfe Cookbook - 1981 - Front Cover
The Nero Wolfe Cookbook - 1981 - Rear Cover
The Nero Wolfe Cookbook – 1981
By Rex Stout and the Editors of The Viking Press
First published by The Viking Press 1973
Published in Penguin Books 1981
Rear Cover Text:
Nero Wolfe, often billed as the greatest detective in the world, owes much of his impressive bulk to his all-consuming interest in food. After years of pleading from faithful readers, Rex Stout, author of the more than sixty Nero Wolfe stories, finally served up this delightful collection of over 225 recipes for the fabulous repasts detailed in the mysteries. Some of the culinary concoctions are of Wolfe’s own making (the Kanawha Spa dinner, for example), but most of them have been prepared exclusively by his faithful and ingenious majordomo, Fritz Brenner, who can whip up perfect shad-roe mousse Pocahontas, corn fritters with wild-thyme honey, hedgehog omelet, or fig souffle without batting an eyelash. For the connoisseur of Nero Wolfe stories and of memorable meals, The Nero Wolfe Cookbook is sure to satisfy the most voracious and discriminating of appetites.
“What the nation has been needing (besides the five-cent cigar) is an authoritative treatise on Nero Wolfe’s feeding habits, and this book is superbly welcome.”
-P. G. Wodehouse
“The extracts from Nero and Archie are as indispensable to good cooking as those from coffee and vanilla. The book adds a new dementia to dining.”
-Jacques Barzun
Cover design by Neil Stuart
Cover photograph by WaIter Wick
Thanks Text:
Thanks
The only part of this book that is all mine is the excerpts from the stories which precede the recipes. All the dishes mentioned in Too Many Cooks were cooked twice-some three times or more- by the late Sheila Hibben and me. For years she wrote regularly for The New Yorker on food and cooking and restaurants, and she was my dear and valued friend. (A bit of her: One day in January when I was driving her to my house from the station she said, “This country is so wonderful like this, without all those goddam leaves obstructing the view.”)
Barbara Burn’s name should be on the title page. The comments and explanations in italics are all by her, as well as the final wording of most of the recipes. Without her there would have been no Nero Wolfe cookbook. She also tested, or supervised the testing of, many of the dishes. I thank her warmly.
I thank Michael S. Romano, who tested more than half of the dishes and wrote the first draft of many of the recipes. I thank Helen Taylor, who chose and collected the excerpts from the stories and tested a few of the recipes. And I thank Marshall Best and Laurie Colwin and Mary Chambers and Barbara Morris and Susan Mabon.
That’s gratitude for you!
-Rex Stout
Nero Wolfe 