To set before the king

In the 1970s, renowned chef and cookbook collector Louis Szathmary purchased a notebook written in German and dated 1905, containing more than two hundred recipes for soups, appetizers, main dishes, and a wealth of desserts, ices, and punches. This kitchen notebook, a concrete remnant from the paradoxical world of turn-of-the-century Vienna, belonged to a woman who played an extraordinary role in her society: actress Katharina Schratt, lavishly admired by crowned heads, industrialists, artists, composers and Franz Joseph I, emperor of Austria and king of Hungary. Schratt was his friend, companion, and confidante for thirty-two years, and these are the foods she served in her home. To Set before the King is really three books in one, Gertrud Champe has written an entertaining biography of Schratt and her glittering world. The carefully translated recipes themselves, from Little Croustades a la Talleyrand to Goulash a la Andrassy to Gingerbread a l'Elise are either comfortable and homey to soothe the highly regimented emperor or elegant and sophisticated to suit the palates of Schratt's more vivacious friends. Finally, working from Schratt's tantalizing aide-memoire, Chef Louis Szathmary has created almost a hundred updated Austro-Hungarian recipes that will bring the world of this European metropolis to the tables of today's cooks.