The Making of a Cook — Kamman, Atheneum 1971 Hardcover

📖 The Making of a Cook by Madeleine Kamman (Atheneum, New York, 1971) — the French-born chef and teacher’s first book, and the one her admirers call her masterwork: classical French technique taught through the science of why cooking works. This copy is the 1971 Atheneum Book Club Edition hardcover with its original, unclipped dust jacket.

QUICK FACTS

• Author: Madeleine Kamman (1930–2018), French-born chef, teacher, and restaurateur
• Publisher: Atheneum, New York (simultaneously in Canada by McClelland and Stewart Ltd.)
• Year: 1971 (copyright 1971; Book Club Edition)
• Format: Hardcover with illustrated dust jacket
• Pages: xiv + 559 | ISBN: None printed on the 1971 hardcover
• Condition: Book: Very Good / Jacket: Good+ — full report below

THE BOOK

Kamman grew up cooking in her aunt’s Michelin-starred restaurant in Touraine, trained at the Cordon Bleu Academy and the École des Trois Gourmandes — the school run by Julia Child, Simone Beck, and Louise Bertholle — and arrived in the United States in 1960. The Making of a Cook, her first of seven cookbooks, appeared in 1971, when Child was already America’s best-known French-cuisine authority and professional French kitchens were openly dismissive of women cooks. Kamman answered by being unassailable: the book pairs hundreds of recipes collected from across the Western world with “lessons” arranged in the natural order of a cook’s growth, and it always explains why — what happens cell for cell and fiber for fiber as a sauce emulsifies, a soufflé rises, or fish steams.

THIS EDITION

A 1971 Atheneum printing issued as a Book Club Edition (imprint on the lower jacket flap) — same year, format, and text as the trade edition. Printed in the U.S.A.; the copyright page notes simultaneous Canadian publication by McClelland and Stewart Ltd. The title page carries Kamman’s dedication, “To My Three Men.”

COVER & DESIGN

The dust jacket (design credited to Muni Lieblein) is a mid-century kitchen still life: a clock-face cartouche holding the title and author’s name above a hanging pan of cooking ingredients, on a blue ground. Beneath the jacket, yellow cloth boards with decorative framing and red lettering, red endpapers. The interior is text throughout, no illustrations, organized as self-teaching lessons: stocks and sauces, compound butters (pages 138–139 include her Geneva Butter, developed as a faster alternative to beurre blanc), chaud-froids and aspics, vegetables, and kidney cookery. The jacket flaps carry Kamman’s Paris-to-Boston biography and a signature passage on rescuing a curdled hollandaise.

WHY IT MATTERS

• Kamman’s first book, and the work Kitchen Arts & Letters calls “the masterwork of a woman with a bone to pick and a point to prove”
• Written from inside the classical tradition: trained at the Cordon Bleu and the École des Trois Gourmandes alongside Julia Child, Simone Beck, and Louise Bertholle
• Taught technique through food science decades before “modernist” cooking made it fashionable — still sought by chefs, culinary historians, and serious home cooks

FREQUENTLY ASKED

What edition is this? The 1971 Atheneum Book Club Edition hardcover — not the trade first, but the same year and text, with the “Book Club Edition” imprint on the lower jacket flap.

What condition is it in? Graded Very Good (book) / Good+ (dust jacket) — the full graded condition report follows below.

Is the dust jacket included? Yes — present and unclipped, with the edge wear, minor chipping, and small closed tears described in the condition report.

FOR COLLECTORS

A handsome reading copy of a 1970s culinary landmark: the same-year Book Club Edition in its original jacket, priced far below a trade-first or signed copy. Kamman’s early books are increasingly collected as classic statements of French technique in America.

Book Details

• Author: Madeleine Kamman
• Illustrator: Muni Lieblein (Jacket Design)
• Publisher: Atheneum
• Binding: HARDCOVER
• Edition Points: Book Club Edition indicated on lower flap of dust jacket; copyright date of 1971; published simultaneously in Canada by McClelland and Stewart Ltd.

Condition Report

• Overall Grade: Book: Very Good (VG) / Jacket: Good+ (G+)
• Cover & Spine: Vibrant yellow cloth boards with blue decorative framing and red lettering; cloth is clean with sharp corners and minimal rubbing to head and foot of spine.
• Dust Jacket: Present; unclipped with “Book Club Edition” imprint. Shows edge wear with minor chipping and small closed tears along top edges and spine extremities; surface rubbing and handling marks.
• Text Block & Pages: Text block edges are lightly age-toned; deckled fore-edge intact; interior pages are off-white/cream, clean, supple, and unmarked. Sprayed upper edge clean, relatively uniform. Thick block outer edge somewhat sagged from weight. No loose, torn or folded pages, no writing or labels.
• Binding: Hardcover binding is square, solid, and tight; red endpapers intact with firm hinges.

See accompanying images for full condition details. Will ship promptly, carefully packaged.

HFB-SEO-v1: 2026-10-14

Shelf: B1-5

1 in stock