In this remarkable debut, Bauermeister creates a captivating world where the pleasures and particulars of sophisticated food come to mean much more than simple epicurean indulgence. Respected chef and restaurateur Lillian has spent much of her 30-something years in the kitchen, looking for meaning and satisfaction in evocative, delicious combinations of ingredients. Endeavoring to instill that love and know-how in others, Lillian holds a season of Monday evening cooking classes in her restaurant. The novel takes up the story of each of her students, navigating readers through the personal dramas, memories and musings stirred up as the characters handle, slice, chop, blend, smell and taste. Each student’s affecting story—painful transitions, difficult choices—is rendered in vivid prose and woven together with confidence.
I like books about book groups, writing classes, language lessons or knitting clubs as they are essentially books about friendships focusing additionally on a certain topic. They resemble cozy mysteries in which an amateur sleuth, besides solving a crime, introduces us to his craft, hobby or profession. Most of the books of this book club/lesson/school subgroup are not up to my expectations and still, whenever I see one, I have to read it sooner or later. When I read about The School Of Essential Ingredients I was curious and thought it might be uplifting to read a novel that takes you into the realm of food, cooking, spices and aromas during the bleak month of February. And for a change I was not disappointed. It is entertaining, charming and provides intelligent reflections on food and food preparation.
From the reviews I read, I know that some people had a problem with the form of this novel as each chapter is dedicated to another character. We only catch glimpses of their lives. Unlike in The Fiction Class that I enjoyed so much last year, there is no main character in this novel.
Lillian is a chef and owns an expensive and very exclusive restaurant. She organizes monthly cooking classes in which she teaches a very special form of cooking that is meant to inspire and transform. The beginning of every new class is exciting as people come for so many various reasons. Of course they want to learn to cook but they also want to make friends. Some only come because they were offered a voucher. Each person has their own dreams and sorrows that they carry with them.
Lillian is far more than just a simple cook. Already as a child she has learned that you can affect people if you serve them the right food. She did this when she managed to guide her own mother back into life. After having been left by Lillian’s father, her mother shied away from the world and withdrew into books. By cooking the right meal, choosing the right ingredients, Lillian achieved to pull her back into life, to make her notice the world around her and to participate again.
This is what she also does in her cooking classes. She has a good eye for people and studies her pupils closely. Through choosing the right menu, she manages to trigger something in them.
Each month is dedicated to another meal and another person. While they cook and discover new tastes and new aromas, the students are touched in a profound way, remember something of their past or discover new joys in the present.
There is Claire a young mother who rediscovers herself outside of her role as mother and wife and finds back to a more authentic, less limited perception of herself. Her dish is a meal of crabs and preparing it reveals to her an inner strenghth she didn’t know she had (It was a bit hard to read this chapter as the process of killing the crabs is described. Admittedly in a thoughtful and thought-provoking way.).
There is Helen, an elderly woman fighting the early signs of dementia or Alzheimer’s. During “her” evening they cook fondue. There are many others. Tom, a young man who is mourning his wife who was a chef herself, Antonia, an Italian interior designer and the elderly couple Helen and Carl.
At the end of the novel, the little group has become a group of friends who will probably go on seeing each other. Only Lillian hasn’t become a part of it a fact which fills her with an unfullfilled longing.
Susan Breen’s The Fiction Class, that I mentioned before, was completely focusing on the teacher. She was the central character who tied the stories together. This isn’t the case here. Although Lillian is a force, she stays in the background. She is like one of those ingredients in a dish that you only notice when they are absent. Maybe like salt.
I know that this approach didn’t work for every reader but I liked the stories and the descriptions of the aromas, ingredients and the setting and found the book to be positively enchanting. You can feel Erica Bauermeister’s inspiring love of food and especially Slow Food that she discovered during her stay in Italy.
Erica Bauermeister is the editor of 500 Great Books by Women and Let’s hear it for the Girls. The School Of Essential ingredients is her first novel.
She has her own website on which you can find recipes and guest posts she has written for other bloggers.
Beauty is a Sleeping Cat 
I’m just not that much into food, and I’ve learned (from experience) that I don’t like books (or films) that have a large food element in them. I did note, however, that you mentioned you like books about book groups. Have you tried The Jane Austen Book club?I read it expecting to dislike it, but I ended up enjoying it.
I did actually like The Jane Austen Book Club as well. I found the idea appealing to start with. I was not too sure about this one but it turned out better than expected. I would say you have to be at least a litte bit interested in food therefore I think this one is probably not for you.
Same comment as Guy : no book about food for me and I had a good time reading The Jane Austen Book Club.
What’s with the food hostility? I cannot understand how any topic can be generally of no interest… It all depends on the way it is presented. If it’s done well I would even read a book on the mating ritual of the common fruit fly …
It’s not food hostility. I’m not interested in gastronomy, cooking and all stuff around this. I yawn when I hear a chef on the radio, and being French and living in France it happens very often.I don’t drink wine and discussions about oenology are a nightmare for me.(and those are frequent here too)
Maybe I was born in the wrong country 🙂
Now that is interesting, I hate talking about food or hearing people talk about it. It is a typical feature of conversation in affluent societies. And I do not like food prepared by others, mostly, but I like scents in general. What interested me is the parts related to scent. Taste isn’t that interesting. I think maybe Italian’s have another way of talking or enjoying food. Slow Food has nothing to do with French cooking, it’s a way of life in which you take time for things, food being a part of it. If I was still living in France it might get on my nerves as well. Mine is a purely intellectual interest and I like, as said, cooking but I am not overly interested in eating. If I didn’t have to, I would skip it altogether but since it is sort of vital, rather do it in style. I like food markets and the like because I love colors. That’s in the book… Whatever… We all like different things.
I read about this one somewhere else and I recall that other reader liked it as well. Sometimes having too many threads only makes the story weak with nothing sticking out as important, but since the story revolves around cooking, it sounds like it might work very well. I also thought of the Jane Austen book Club as Guy mentions, though I didn’t read the book. The movie was okay, but I bet the book was better. If you like reading about food, have you read Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquival? I loved that book when it came out (the movie, too!).
I did read Like Water for Chocolat but it is too long ago now for me to fully remember it. This novel has been compared to Esquivel’s and to Chocolat. I have only seen the movie Chocolat and I think the way food is handled in this novel is similar but without the story. I read The Mistress of Spices that was a huge success in Europe and sounded like such a good idea but was utterly dull, this one is much better. It’s actually not too heavy on food. I enjoy the Slow Food movement a lot. It is basically just Italian homecooking.
Is it like My Sister’s Keeper? In My Sister’s Keeper, Picoult wrote each chapter to different member of family and each character said ‘I’ instead of she or he. I really don’t like that style of writing.
But if it still used she or he, I can still take it.
A book on food is something new to me, I’ve heard/read Manga on food before.
No, it is absolutely clear whose chapter it is. It is more like short stories, each person’s life story is told within the frame of the cooking class and their special evening. It did really work well. I did like the food part. It is menat to raise awareness, make you think what you eat, where it comes from. What does it mena to kill an animal for food… I found this part interesting. The menu choices were somewhat weird though. A Manga on food?
Ah…that’s better,in that way I can still imagine each character well.
Manga that talk about food,one of them is this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakitate!!_Japan
Thanks, I will look it up.
I absolutely loved this book! Bauermeister’s descriptions were so wonderful I could almost taste and smell the food. I enjoyed each character’s story, even if they left me wanting more.
I thought she did a very great job at describing everything. Also loved the way she rendered the restaurant. It’s a place I would love to visit if it existed. The stories also left me wanting more but still it was satisfactory… I would also have liked to know more about Lillian. I don’t know if you looked at Bauermeisters page, she did a few great guest posts on some blogs. I saw that you often have guest posts by authors. Did she do one on yours?
I interviewed her here:
http://diaryofaneccentric.wordpress.com/2009/02/12/interview-with-erica-bauermeister-author-of-the-school-of-essential-ingredients/
Please excuse the formatting errors. I’m in the process of editing old posts from the switch from blogger to wordpress, but haven’t got to this one yet!
Oh thanks. I am looking forward to reading it.