One Soufflé At A Time, Anne Willan

One of our on going projects here at Feed Me…I’m Hungry is our ‘World Food Tour’ where we take time to find out more about culture and food from around the world by exploring recipes, cookbooks, memoirs and more. Right now we’re enjoying the fine food of France.

I’m going to begin by stating that Anne Willan is an absolutely amazing woman and has led an amazing life. She is the founder of La Varenne Cooking School in France, which is the ‘alma matter’ of many of the most illustrious names in the food world. She was a close friend of the famed Julia Child. She has traveled widely, met fascinating people, cooked fascinating food, and is well published in the cookbook world. One Soufflé At A Time is Anne Willan’s memoir encompassing both her personal story and La Varenne’s founding.

That all being said I found I was somewhat disappointed in One Soufflé. I absolutely adore memoirs, particularly those set in France, and particularly those involving food. Considering that this book fits all the criteria I just listed; I really anticipated enjoying One Soufflé. As I said Anne Willan is an fascinating person, she has done some seriously cool stuff, and told the right way her story could be really engaging. But unfortunately memoir style writing is not her strong suit.

I found I had two major problems with the book: The first is that a natural story flow was really missing from large chunks of the book. 

The book quickly started to read like a laundry list of steps the author was following rather then a naturally flowing story. I can imagine this list like quality is very suited to the wide variety and large collection of cookbooks she has produced. But for a memoir it just didn’t work. Honestly it was boring.

The beginning of the book where Willan recounts some of her childhood memories and food experiences doesn’t read this way so much and was much more engaging. But by the time the book had made it to France and the founding of La Varenne I largely started to feel like I was reading Willan’s ‘to do’ list. From time to time she would tell an amusing story that really drew me in, but overall it just wasn’t enough for me. (I’ll mention that one of my favorites was that of a chef working for the school who chose the unfortunate location of the men’s restroom to cool large pots of stock intended for cooking lessons. I’ll let you read the book if you’re curious about the full story though.) The same problem occurred when Willian talked about her travels. Considering she made it to fascinating places like the Middle East, South America, and great deal of Europe, this shouldn’t read in such a dull way. Truthfully, now that I have finished reading the book, all those travel experiences have just blurred together for me. She just didn’t manage to pass on the excitement I envision with such far flung travel.

The second thing that bothered me about the book was the name dropping.

Now again, I think Anne Willan is awesome. And obviously she met, was friends with or worked with a lot, and I do mean A LOT, of famous people (including royalty). But in the book on an average page 2-3 names are mentioned. Admittedly not all of these names are famous, but a lot are. After a while it just starts to feel like name dropping. It makes you wonder is it to build up Willan’s reputation? I personally think Willan’s reputation can stand on it’s own, so probably not that. Was Willan just star struck? Again I don’t think so. Willan actually strikes me as being very down to Earth and unswayed by such things. 

I actually don’t believe that this endless name dropping effect was really the author’s intent. I’m theorizing that this is more a result of trying to record every little detail she remembered. That can sometimes be a good thing, but in this case created that list like problem I’ve been talking about. I think the names are just one more list. But again it actually gets boring and really detracted from any flow to the story, which wasn’t the greatest to begin with. 

The one thing I was really impressed with in the book was the recipes. I could almost, almost buy the book just for the recipes. I think that almost every single recipe sounded tasty and most of them sounded flipin’ amazing. Chocolate snowball, seven hour leg of lamb, cheese soufflés, apricot and pistachio brittle, chocolate pear tart…. I can honestly say I will be looking for some of Willian’s cookbooks soon. 

But despite the recipes, over all I have to give this book two and a half stars (out of five). Some of it is reasonably written. Willan has led quite a life. The recipes look killer. But over all the writing in looses it for me. When I have to push myself that hard to finish a book because I just can’t stay interested that’s the best I can give it. If you are still interested in this one after my not exactly glowing review I would recommend checking this one out of the library and reading it before investing in a personal copy.