The founder of La Varenne Cooking School in Paris offers a succinct history of her female predecessors.In this tasty, digestible volume, Willan, a member of the James Beard Foundation Awards Hall of Fame with more than six decades of experience in the world of food and cooking, explores a semialternative narrative of American and British cuisines. Female cookbook authors, she argues, have not only offered sound guidance to the millions of women feeding their families and guests since the 1600s; they have also gained financial independence and prestige, set trends, and paved the way for each other's success. A collector of cookbooks herself, Willan clearly draws from a deep well of knowledge and passion in her biographies of 12 influential female writers. Via their stories, she crafts a clearly written, cohesive chronicle of the evolution of American and British cuisine, complete with colorful anecdotes about the movement and fashion of ingredients, the influence of class and education on women's private and public culinary lives, and the gradual acceptance of cultural diversity into the mainstream palate. Occasionally repetitive-we learn multiple times about how "tomatoes were regarded with suspicion when they were brought to Europe from the New World" or that corn, a staple for Native Americans, "was a challenge for early American cooks"-Willan's accounts of early British and American kitchens will leave contemporary cooks grateful for our modern conveniences and abundant flavor options. Each biography is accompanied by some of their subject's most delectable recipes, first from the original texts and then reinterpreted by Willan. The older recipes are marvelous and entertaining historical documents that rely on the author's translations to make them accessible. By the time she gets to figures like Julia Child and Alice Waters, who wrote rigorously tested recipes in an easily recognizable style, Willan's adaptations contribute little.Approachable and charming, this text allows readers to learn about the lineage of women cooks while participating in it.

James Beard Award-winning author Willan (The Country Cooking of France) winnows centuries of women cookbook authors to an influential dozen whose biographies and recipes form the backbone of this smartly executed book. Drawing from her own 2,000-plus cookbook collection built up over decades of writing about food, Willan notes -most of the active, recipe books, the ones I take into the kitchen, are by women.- She begins with Hannah Woolley, who in 1670 published the first woman-s cookbook, handwritten in 1661, in English, and closes with Alice Waters, who opened her -little French restaurant- Chez Panisse three centuries later and in 1982 shared its lauded recipes in the first of several cookbooks. The other 10 women include the familiar (Fannie Farmer, Irma Rombauer) and the forgotten, among them Lydia Child (better known for the classic rhyme, -Over the river and through the wood-). Recipes vary from unexpected (a 17th-century version of almond milk) and rustic (-Indian Slapjack,- from 1796) to sophisticated (Julia Child-s coq au vin; Marcella Hazan-s polenta con la luganega). Both cooks and historians will eagerly tuck into this cleverly conceived, well-researched collection. (Aug.)