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House. She wanted to be an editor. She was obviously serious, and would attract interesting authors to the house. She knew everybody, read widely, and had excellent taste. I also knew that she could pick up within a few weeks the rudiments of the job. The rest takes a lifetime, but the rudiments would get her started. However, there was a problem. Entry-level editorial jobs were scarce and much in demand. The young assistants at Random, some of whom were excellent editorial prospects, had been waiting for such an opening for months—in some cases years—and were in the meantime performing routine tasks, hoping to be chosen. I told Jackie that I believed she would take the job seriously, be a good colleague, and learn the ropes easily. But I also told her that we would have to create an opening for her, and this might not be fair to the assistants. Before I could ask her to let me talk it over with my colleagues, she said that she understood my problem and didn’t want to impose. I was grateful for her tactfulness but regretted the outcome. Eventually, she took a job at Doubleday, where she signed a number of interesting authors and worked until her final illness. I have wished ever since that she could have joined us at Random House.

Like everything else at Lutèce, André’s shad roe was superb and easy to prepare, provided you treated it with care. Shad are available only in early spring as they move up the East Coast to spawn.

SHAD ROE WITH SORREL SAUCE

The roe are rather rich, and a single pair (the roe come in two banana-shaped lobes connected by a thin membrane) per serving are quite enough. If the roe are large, a single lobe is plenty. André prepared a sorrel sauce, the classic accompaniment. Sorrel first appears in the garden in early spring, when the shad are running. First wash a pound of sorrel and cut it in julienne strips. Warm it in a pot with some butter, and when the water from the sorrel has evaporated, add a pinch of sugar and a half-cup of heavy cream. When the sauce thickens a bit, take it off the stove. Then, with a very sharp knife, delicately separate the two lobes of the roe, being careful not to penetrate the egg sac. This will make it easier to turn the lobes as you brown them gently in butter. André dipped the roe in milk and dusted it in flour before adding it to the pan. I omit this step, but in either case sauté the roe over a medium flame—too much heat will generate steam and burst the sac—until lightly browned. Then, with a spatula in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other, carefully turn the lobe over and brown the other side, about three to six minutes per side, depending upon size. Do not overcook! The roe should be a little pink at the center. Set the roe on a platter and nap it with the sauce. Serve it with a lemon wedge, a few boiled and buttered potatoes, and a good Alsatian wine.

ADVENTURES WITH ALICE AND OTHER GREAT COOKS

Inevitably, my interest in cooking led me to publish cookbooks, mostly by master chefs and bakers whose techniques I was eager to learn. These books sold well year after year, and some, like Alice Waters’s Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook, became widely influential classics. A few professional chefs know how to adapt their recipes to domestic kitchens, which are unlikely to have on hand a gallon of veal stock, and even less likely to have reduced it to two cups of glace. But most chefs depend upon skilled cookbook writers to adapt and test their dishes, and these books usually lack personality. Not Alice Waters, however, whose vivid Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook was the first of many books by great chefs that I published. Alice was as meticulous an author as she was a chef, and a joy—if a demanding joy—to work with. With Alice, everything had to be just so: the jacket design, the typography, the binding, to say nothing of the writing itself. If she hadn’t become a chef, she might have become a fine book designer, another craft in which style, precision, and taste are essential.

I did not seek Alice out. In the early eighties, she was a celebrity in the Bay Area,