| Editor | MFK Fisher |
| First Written | 1942 |
| Genre | Cookbook |
| Origin | US |
| Publisher | North Point Press |
| My Copy | library paperback |
| First Read | March 4, 2026 |
How to Cook a Wolf
Notes
Interesting to see the culinary and nutritional differences between midcentury and today. Fisher’s chapter on eggs, which was fun throughout, is very concerned with the idea that eggs are good but hard to digest, and the harder they are cooked the more stress it is on your body to process it.
Noted on March 4, 2026
This is a revised edition; originally written in 1942 when food shortages were dire, then revised in 1951. The author adds lots of notes qualifying or disagreeing with herself in [brackets]. Of course it’s interesting to hear some thoughts about how things have changed in the intervening years, and watch her equivocate or affirm herself - but by page 29 I’m finding it oftentimes more distracting than not.
Noted on March 4, 2026
This is entirely charming - a pseudo-cookbook about how to eat well when food (or money or fuel) is short. The proverbial wolf here is ‘the wolf at the door,’ ie hunger. It’s got chapters of general advice broken down by topic (or sometimes dish or ingredient), but with many specifics and recipes scattered throughout. Fisher’s a great writer, delightful and opinionated and funny.
Noted on March 4, 2026
Quotes
Newspapers tell us, with government permission, that wheat costing some five cents a pound is "refined" until it is not only tasteless but almost worthless nutritionally, and that the wheat germ that is thus removed is then sold for at least a dollar and a half and at the end put back into the bread, so that in loaves it can be sold for a little more than the ordinary price and called "Super-Vitaminized" or "Energized" or some such thing.Quoted on March 5, 2026
… cut for yourself, if you will, a slice of bread that you have seen mysteriously rise and redouble and fall and fold under your hands. It will smell better, and taste better, than you remembered anything could possibly taste or smell, and it will make you feel, for a time at least, newborn into a better world than this one often seems.Quoted on March 5, 2026
Probably the wisest way to treat an egg is not to cook it at all. An accomplished barfly will prove to you that a Prairie Oyster (... as set forth on page 65) is one of the quickest pickups known to man, and whether you are hungover or merely tired, a raw egg beaten with a little milk or sherry can make you feel much more able to cope with yourself, and shortly too. [My children react happily to an egg yolk spread on dark bread and then well sprinkled with brown sugar, for a potent snack.]Quoted on March 5, 2026
Of course, the finest way to know that the egg you plan to eat is a fresh one is to own the hen that makes it. This scheme has many drawbacks, and I for one, as a person who has never felt any bond of sympathy between myself and a chicken' (their heads are too small, somehow, for their stupid, scratching, omnivorous bodies)…Quoted on March 5, 2026
This frittata is a good dish. It can be made with almost anything: string beans, peas, spinach, artichokes. Cheese can be sprinkled over it. Different kinds of herbs like sweet basil, summer savory, on and on, can change its whole character. And with a glass of wine and some honest-to-God bread it is a meal. At the end of it you know that Fate cannot harm you, for you have dined.Quoted on March 5, 2026
Probably the most satisfying soup in the world for people who are hungry, as well as for those who are tired or worried or cross or in debt or in a moderate amount of pain or in love or in robust health or in any kind of business huggermuggery, is minestrone.Quoted on March 5, 2026
One of the saving graces of the less-monied people of the world has always been, theoretically, that they were forced to eat more unadulterated, less dishonest food than the rich-bitches. It begins to look as if that were a lie.Quoted on March 5, 2026
Wise men forever have known that a nation lives on what its body assimilates, as well as on what its mind acquires as knowledge. Now, when the hideous necessity of the war machine takes steel and cotton and humanity, our own private personal secret mechanism must be stronger, for selfish comfort as well as for the good of the ideals we believe we believe in.Quoted on March 5, 2026
Perhaps it is an old wives' tale; perhaps it is a part of our appetites more easily explained by The Golden Bough than by a cook or doctor: whatever the reason, a roasted pigeon is and long has been the most heartening dish to set before a man bowed down with grief or loneliness. In the same way it can reassure a timid lover, or comfort a woman weak from childbirth.
It is not easy to find pigeons, these days. Most of the ones you know about in the city are working for the government.Quoted on March 6, 2026