HOW TO COOK A WOLF By M. F. K. Fisher.

May 22, 1942 Books of the Times
Review By ORVILLE PRESCOTT
HOW TO COOK A WOLF
By M. F. K. Fisher.
Cook books are indisputably indispensable for the welfare of the human race, and they sell very nicely (Fannie Farmer’s ''Boston Cook Book'' some 2,040,000 copies). So each year publishers proffer new ones of all sizes and varieties, from lordly an expensive tomes invoking the honored names of Escoffier, Vatel and Brillat-Savarin to cute and coy brides' companions designed to aid in holding a husband's love and winning a mother-in-law's respect. Few indeed have any claims to literary merit. At least, few did until a knowing lady who signs herself austerely M. F. K. Fisher began conducting her one-woman revolution in the field of literary cookery. Mrs. Fisher writes about food with such relish and enthusiasm that the mere reading of her books creates a clamorous appetite. She also writes with a robust sense of humor and a nice capacity for a neatly turned phrase. Her third book devoted to food and its preparation is called most aptly, considering war and taxes, ''How to Cook a Wolf.''

Mrs. Fisher leaves voluminous reference books that contain recipes for everything from avocados to zabaglione to others, concentrates on making unorthodox, specific and pointed suggestions about cooking various types of food, soups, meats, vegetables, eggs, etc., and then includes several of her pet recipes in each category. But before that, like any conscientious student of composition, she sets about arousing reader interest and does so with a vengeance. Her chapter titles themselves are gems that provoke an irresistible desire to find out just what on earth she means by them: ''How to Distribute Your Virtue,'' ''How to Boil Water,'' ''How to Greet the Spring,'' ''How to Be Cheerful Through Starving'' ''How to Pray for Peace,'' ''How to Be Content With a Vegetable Love'' and ''How to Have a Sleek Pelt.''

She doesn’t have much use for any too scrupulous weighing out of precise quantities of calories, vitamins, International Units, and what not, beloved by recently converted nutrition experts. ''One of the stupidest things in an earnest but stupid school of culinary thought is that each of the three daily meals should be 'balanced.' Of course, where countless humans are herded together, as in military camps or schools or prisons, it is necessary to strike what is ironically called the happy medium. In this case, what kills the least number with the most ease is the chosen way.'' Balance the day's food consumption, says Mrs. Fisher, not each meal, whether you eat one or five.

Of course, for a mere male book reviewer who has never become even a naturalized citizen of that foreign country, the kitchen, a good deal of the ground covered in ''How to Cook a Wolf'' is terra incognita. It sounds like good sense to suggest that when you cook anything in the oven at all you cook a lot of things at once to save gas. But is rubbing a chicken with a cut of lemon, to keep its flavorsome juices inside while cooking, a new and sensational idea that will be a boon to mankind, or is it standard practice for any housewife? I wouldn't know. But one thing I can feel more comfortably certain about is that Mrs. Fisher is not accustomed to cooking for lumberjacks, cowboys or even men who have played three sets of tennis or eighteen holes of golf. She has the weird notion that if a soup is rich enough and good enough, it is almost presumptuous to want anything else. Imagine! And she is very scornful and patronizing about desserts, too. After giving a recipe for date pudding, she suggests that a soup and salad are sufficient with it and no meat or vegetables are needed to call it a dinner! And she has an unaccountable passion for that dreariest of all foods, baked apples. Did some one mention that proverb about tastes?

One of the most interesting and intensely practical suggestions Mrs. Fisher makes is in a chapter called, with grim frankness, ''How to Keep Alive.'' She does not recommend it to gourmets but to those who have failed to keep the wolf on the outside of the door, and would be grateful for a recipe that would feed a whole family for four days for fifty cents. Fifteen cents' worth of ground beef (not hamburger), ten cents' worth of ground whole grain cereal, twenty-five cents' worth of inferior, coarser, tougher vegetables, carrots, celery, cabbage, onions are needed. After proper boilings, choppings, mixings and coolings, you have a paste Mrs. Fisher calls ''sludge.'' It may sound depressing, but it is superbly nutritious for the cost. ''You can eat it cold and not suffer much, if your needs are purely animal and unfinanced, but if you can heat what you want two or three times a day it will probably taste much better.'' Not only is it good for people, it is ideal fare for dogs.

One of the charms of ''How To Cook a Wolf'' over and beyond any practical use of the recipes included is Mrs. Fisher's wry humor. She tells amusing stories between dishes and colors nearly every page with her own forthright, astringent personality. She insists that an old gin bottle kept in the icebox and filled at intervals with vegetable juices, fruit juices and canned fruit juices is a mighty handy thing and a bracing tonic. (Ugh!) She insists that boiling water too long before using it is a great mistake and deleterious to whatever is being cooked. Again, as a mere man, I am bewildered. Is she joking, or is water that has boiled for several minutes any different from water that has just come to a boil?

She emphasizes that a mirror on the kitchen shelf is a great inspiration to the cook, who can draw reassurance from it or in sudden emergencies use it for hasty hair pokings that make all the difference to feminine self-confidence. But judging from her picture, Mrs. Fisher is one cook who has grounds to be very confident indeed without a kitchen mirror.
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