Death Du Jour - Hardcover

Lou Jane Temple is a caterer in Kansas City, Missouri. A guest chef at the Culinary Institute of America and the James Beard Foundation, she has also been a restaurateur and a food and wine critic. She is the author of the culinary mystery series featuring caterer Heaven Lee.

Fanny Delarue, cook for a rich Parisian family, suffers distress when her culinary mentor is brutally murdered. Fanny determines to unravel the mystery surrounding his death, fearing that if she doesn't solve the riddle of the crime, her position and her future lie in jeopardy. The mystery unfolds against the backdrop of that very brief period of revolutionary euphoria immediately following the fall of the Bastille and before the onset of the Terror. This was the moment when restaurants began proliferating as noble cooks moved out of palaces and chateaus to feed the nascent industrial class. Temple, herself a chef, takes great delight in the historical culinary details, and those of similar taste will follow her savory descriptions. The characters' psychologies may betray some anachronistic treatments, but the historical detail of -eighteenth-century Paris remains faithful. Temple tops off her mystery with a recipe for marinated leeks and two desserts that reflect the period and that may be readily reproduced by a competent cook. Mark Knoblauch
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