These days when I need a recipe in a hurry, I turn to the web. But if I have time, I turn to the legion of cookbooks that we have collected over the years. Besides the cookbooks we each brought to our marriage, we have a number of books rescued from the estates of loved ones who are no longer with us.

I recently wrote about two books of mine that I have long treasured. They are books on French cooking by an interesting author named Edouard de Pomiane (1875-1964), a medical doctor and food scientist who also presided over a popular radio show in France during the 1930s. He espoused a philosophy of simple cooking, which is unusual when you consider the complexity of most French cooking techniques.

Pomiane wrote a lot of books, but these two are the ones most easily found translated into English…