The European cookbook for American homes (from Italy, Spain, Portugal and France)

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This 1936 volume by Cora Lovisa Brackett Brown presents a country-by-country tour of European cooking adapted for American kitchens, moving through Italy, Spain, the Basque region, Portugal, and France in turn. Rather than organizing by dish category alone, the book weaves historical anecdotes, regional customs, and cultural commentary into its recipe collections, treating cuisine as an expression of national character. Readers will find detailed instructions for pasta, risotto, and Italian frozen desserts; Spanish stews, sauces, and elaborate pastries; Portuguese seafood dishes with whimsically named sweets; and an extensive survey of French provincial cooking from Provence to Burgundy to Alsace, culminating in classical pastry technique. The author frequently explains ingredient substitutions for American cooks, discusses regional wine pairings, and includes origin stories for particular dishes. With 503 anchored food records across seventeen sections, this is a substantial reference work aimed at home cooks seeking to recreate authentic continental dishes using ingredients available in 1930s America. It functions simultaneously as a cookbook and a work of culinary travel writing, blending practical recipes with cultural observation about markets, dining customs, and regional identity across four countries.

The book is organized geographically by country, proceeding through Italy (sections 1-4), Spain and the Basque region (sections 5-9), Portugal (sections 9-12), and France (sections 12-17). Within each national section, recipes are further grouped by course or category, typically following a sequence of appetizers, soups, fish, meat and poultry, vegetables, eggs, sauces, and desserts, mirroring the traditional meal structures the author describes for each culture. Historical and cultural essays introducing each country's cuisine, dining customs, and wine traditions precede or punctuate the recipe listings. The French section in particular subdivides further by province (Provence, Languedoc, Burgundy, Normandy, Perigord, Alsace, Champagne, Brittany, Ile-de-France), with regional annotations throughout. The book concludes with an alphabetical recipe index in section 17.