The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book, first published in 1954, is one of the bestselling cookbooks of all time. Alice B. Toklas, writer Gertrude Stein's life partner, wrote the book to make up for her unwillingness at the time to write her memoirs, in deference to Stein's 1933 book, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.
This work is as much of an autobiography as it is a cookbook, in that it contains as many personal recollections as it does recipes. The most famous culinary experiment is a concoction called "Hashish Fudge". Made from spices, nuts, fruit, and Cannabis, Hashish Fudge quickly became a sensation in its own right. In the recipe, Toklas says it is called "the food of paradise" and goes on to suggest places where the cook might find the hashish. She adds that the fudge can liven up any gathering and is "easy to whip up on a rainy day." She cautions two pieces are quite enough and that one should be prepared for hysterical fits of laughter and wild floods of thoughts on "many simultaneous planes."
Although Toklas later said that this recipe was given to her by a friend named Brion Gysin, her name is forever linked with marijuana brownies due to its great success.
Video The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook
In Popular Culture
Toklas's cannabis brownies play a significant role in the plot of the 1968 Peter Sellers movie I Love You, Alice B. Toklas.
In a 1969 episode of the ABC-TV variety show Hollywood Palace hosted by Diana Ross & The Supremes, member Mary Wilson tells Diana that show guest and comedian Soupy Sales has asked The Supremes to bake him a pie, to which Diana Ross replies to her group mates: "A pie, huh? Well, you better not use the recipe you got from Alice B. Toklas!"
In the 1969 episode of Bewitched "Tabitha's Weekend", when Tabitha offers Endora (Agnes Moorehead) a raisin cookie, Endora asks, "They're not by chance from an Alice B. Toklas recipe?" Mother Stephens (Mabel Albertson) says, "They're my recipe," to which Endora says, "Then I think I'll pass."
In the 1978 CHiPs episode "The Grudge," a lead character realizes that the clue word "Alice" represents Alice B. Toklas, and that brownies have been spiked with marijuana.
Source of article : Wikipedia
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