The Silver Palate's Silver
Irene Sax
Posted: August 1, 2007
New York City—Time flies when you're eating well. Was it really 25 years ago that we got our first copy of Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins' The Silver Palate Cookbook? Twenty-five years since we cracked the red-and-white checked cover to discover recipes for dishes like chicken Marbella, chili for a crowd, and nutted wild rice? It must be: Workman Publishing has just brought out a 25th anniversary edition of the 1982 book that inspired millions of dinner parties.
The new Silver Palate has full-color photos to go with Lukins' delicate line drawings and new information about ingredients to reflect the change in availability of products like fresh herbs and artisanal cheeses. The recipes, however, are the same—"all the old classics"—according to Workman spokesman Ron Longe. And these recipes still manage to seem both sophisticated and completely accessible. Despite the fact that many of them call for 10 to 20 ingredients and as many steps, readers have always looked at them and thought, "I can make that."
"You have to remember that there are lots of people who still enjoy the act of cooking, and The Silver Palate is a real cookbook," says Nach Waxman, owner of the New York City cookbook store Kitchen Arts & Letters. "When it came out, it got lots of people interested in what were at the time a whole new set of flavors. It didn't reach into the past but was absolutely of the present."
The book, of course, was an outgrowth of The Silver Palate, the tiny take-out shop that Rosso and Lukins opened on Columbus Avenue in Manhattan in 1977. At the time, the idea of upscale food to go was relatively new, and the shop was so successful that the following year the pair introduced a line of packaged condiments such as vinegars, chutneys, and mustards. In 1981 they got a call from Workman editor Suzanne Rafer, and the rest is culinary history. The book has gone through 63 printings, sold 2.3 million copies, and influenced future books in its split-page design and food quotations from writers as unlikely as Shakespeare and Sir Isaac Newton. Today Lukins is food editor of Parade magazine and Rosso and her husband, Bill Miller, own the Wickwood Inn in Saugatuck, Michigan.
Will The Silver Palate appeal to a generation of home cooks brought up on 30 minute meals? "The recipes are so clear that it's bound to," says Workman's Longe. "Plus, we're hoping that fans will want to replace the old editions that got stained and tattered in the kitchen. We're telling them, 'It's time to refresh your Palate.'"
