White Truffles in Winter

Delphine Daffis is dying, and she wants her husband, French chef August Escoffier (famous for his restaurants, the Savoy and the Ritz), to create a dish named after her, as he has done for his lover, Sara Bernhardt, and countless others, even Queen Victoria. He had always refused, saying “one should never attempt to define the sublime” but Delphine didn’t believe him for a minute. Kelby (Whale Season) uses these historical figures to tell her story, set as WWII looms, and Escoffier has returned to his long estranged wife in Monte Carlo to write his memoir, The Complete Escoffier: A Memory in Meals. Delphine hires Sabine, a local beauty stricken with polio as kitchen help to persuade her husband to create a dish named for her. Without one, Delphine fears the world won’t know that the great chef loved her. Escoffier shows Sabine his cooking techniques, but he cannot settle on a dish that does his wife justice. Instead he’s consumed with regret over his life in Paris and London, which kept him far away from Delphine, his great love, who would not leave Monte Carlo. Kelby captures the sensory pleasures of food and the complex role it plays in the lives of her characters—seductive, repulsive, comforting. Careful research enhances but does not overtake the narrative. Readers in search of an evocative and sensual read will be well satisfied. (Nov.)