If you're a cookbook author, legendary stars likeJulia Child,Marcella Hazan, andEdna Lewiswill always be looming over you. But if you're a cookbook editor (like I was for a few years), there's another kind of gold standard: Judith Jones, the woman whoeditedthe classic cookbooks from those food-world legends. Like the Beatles and producer George Martin, many of these groundbreaking cookbook authors would not have been able to share their vision with us without the guiding hand of Judith Jones.
Jones, who passed away today at the age of 93, wasn't just the cookbook editor who polished words to a fine shine. She had impeccable taste in people who had impeccable taste, fishing the manuscript that would becomeMastering the Art of French Cookingout of the discard pile at Knopf, simply because she wanted to learn how to recreate the dishes she ate during her wartime years in France. She built on the success ofMasteringwith other avid cooks who focused on authentic regional cooking rather than restaurant chefs—a cavalcade that included not only Child, Hazan, and Lewis but James Beard, Joan Nathan,Jacques Pépin, and Marion Cunningham. Is it any wonder that three of the10 cookbooks Epicurious wants everyone to ownwere edited by Ms. Jones?
(注意:琼斯的技能在发现宝藏不是just restricted to cookbooks. Before she found Julia, she unearthed and championed another manuscript from the discard heap: a diary written by ayoung Dutch girl who perished in the Holocaust.)
But Jones wasn't just an expert curator and slush-pile sifter. Jones edited Marcella Hazan during an era where Chef Boyardee was considered "Italian food" and a pinch of curry powder in a cream sauce was considered "exotic." The amount of skull-crushing labor involved in selecting the most essential recipes, codifying critical techniques, and wrangling it all into a coherent arrangement of chapters makes my head ache in sympathy. But Jones carried her authors—and her readers—through it all, helping to create books that now seem inevitable.
Jones was suchan avid home cookthat eventually, she turned to writing cookbooks herself, authoring classics in her own right likeThe Pleasures of Cooking for One, written after the death of her beloved husband, Evan. The loose, unfussy cooking she details in its pages wasn't dreamed up by an army of recipe developers—like all the books she worked on, they were the sweet fruit of a lifetime of home cooking, packed with lessons honestly learned and eagerly shared. Every time I sit down to a meal I've cooked myself rather than ordered on Seamless, I hope I'll take the time to remember Jones' words and follow her example: "I open up the wine and light the candles, turn on some music, and give thanks."
