Celebrating the Pleasures of Cooking: Chuck Williams Commemorates 40 Years of Cooking in America

by Chuck Williams, Norman Kolpas

From Chuck Williams himself, an entertaining, decade-by-decade look at America's love affair with cooking. Includes more than 145 recipes. Marks the 40th anniversary of Williams-Sonoma.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking

173 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1997

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Please see: Chuck Williams

Charles Edward Williams (October 2, 1915 – December 5, 2015) was the American founder of Williams Sonoma and author and editor of more than 100 books on the subject of cooking. Williams is credited for playing a major role in introducing French cookware into American kitchens through his retail and mail-order business. He became a centenarian in October 2015 and died two months later on December 5, 2015, in San Francisco, California.

In 1947, Chuck Williams settled in Sonoma, California, and opened his first shop as a hardware store. In 1953, Williams took his first trip to France, where he quickly fell in love with French kitchenware such as copper cookware, and is quoted as saying, "I knew this was something that wasn't found in America, but thought people would want." Shortly after returning home, he formulated a plan to import French cooking and serving equipment into America and eventually converted his store into a cookware shop in 1956. Thus, Williams Sonoma was founded, selling professional and restaurant-quality kitchenware for home use, leading to founder Chuck Williams being recognized as one of the titans of the American food revolution.

source: Wikipedia

Reviews

[Catherine Gillespie · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you’re interested in the history and trends of cooking, you might really enjoy Celebrating the Pleasures of Cooking: Chuck Williams Commemorates 40 Years of Cooking in America. The book is a discussion and history of how cooking trends have developed over the past 40 years. I found it pretty intriguing, especially since the book is from Williams-Sonoma so it also contains information about when different tools began to be imported and how that influenced cooking styles. The book also contains recipes, primarily of the sort you read in French cooking books. They are the recipes that apparently defined being a foodie in each decade, which could appeal to you if you are a certain type of person. I would have been even more interested had the book gone back further, because I love reading really old cookbooks and marveling at what was thought the height of sophistication for dinner parties at different times, like the apparent 1950s craze of gelatinizing everything, like the cookbook I once reviewed that included a recipe for gelatinized tunafish. The recipes in this book are more palatable, I promise.

{Read the rest of my review at A Spirited Mind}