OP: Madame Maigret's Recipes

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, 1975. Hardcover. Very Good.

This engaging book was written as a seventieth birthday gift to the inexhaustible writer Georges Simenon—who responded with a lovely letter that is included as a preface. Simenon’s Inspector Maigret is a highly regarded character of detective fiction. Known for his love of neighborhood bars and good hearty foods, he is also kept well-fed by the redoubtable Madame Maigret who, all agree, is an excellent cook. The recipes that appear here were taken, we are told, from the big red notebook that the inspector brought home for her one day.

This is good down-to-earth food “gathered by” the prominent food writer Robert Courtine and published first in France in 1974 as Le Cahier de recettes de madame Maigret, presente par La Reyniere (one of Courtine’s several pseudonyms); the U.S. edition was published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1975. It makes pleasurable reading, with its links to the more than seventy Maigret mysteries, and it can be, of course, enjoyably cooked from.

A Very Good second printing of the American edition. The jacket shows sun fading to the spine and modest wear. Otherwise a crisp, clean interior and sturdy binding.