From Publishers Weekly
After chronicling Civil War–era New York City in
The Spice Box (2005), Temple brings revolutionary Paris to life in her winning second culinary historical. In the summer of 1790, Fanny Delarue, happily employed as an assistant cook in a wealthy household in the Place Royale, is focused on her chores and cooking lessons from Etienne de la Porte, the chef of a neighboring household. Fanny has little interest in the stormy atmosphere hovering over the city since the destruction of the Bastille and the removal of the king and queen from their sumptuous residence at Versailles. When someone stabs Etienne to death, Fanny finds herself in the middle of revolutionary turmoil and a mystery she's determined to solve. A well-constructed plot, an unpredictable ending, authentic historical details and period recipes will please any reader's palate. Temple is also the author of
Death by Rhubarb and other titles in her Heaven Lee culinary series.
(Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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From Booklist
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 KnoblauchCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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