Bon Appétit Makes Its Mammoth Effort

PWTalks with Barbara Fairchild

by Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 7/10/2006

Fairchild, editor-in-chief of Bon Appétit, has been at the magazine since 1978 and edited The Bon Appétit Cookbook (Reviews, June 5).

How does editing a book differ from editing a magazine?

For one thing, the deadlines feel so far away. Making decisions about photography, illustrations, colors and design was not unlike doing a magazine, but a magazine lives for a month and then you go on to the next thing, whereas you want to create a book that can endure, that people will still enjoy 10 years from now.

Did you include recipes from Bon Appétit's entire 50-year history?

We don't have anything that's too ancient, and we did create some new content. Most of it comes from the last 15 years. What we present is a great reflection of the magazine.

What was the selection process like?

It was huge. We run about 1,200 recipes a year, so there was so much to choose from. Many on my staff have been at the magazine for a long time, and we'd get into these discussions: "Well, I like this brownie better than that brownie...." It was fun. We did very little retesting. Sometimes we did, to get our own taste memories back on track. Where we found gaps, we created new recipes.

How have American eating habits changed over the 28 years you've been at Bon Appétit?

The produce, cheese, mushrooms, olive oils, breads, pastas—everything that informs our food today—most people don't realize those things came into being in the last 15 years or so. When I first started at Bon Appétit, things were very French, it was a multicourse meal, and you made everything, because there were no good upscale prepared foods. Now anything goes—you can have three different kinds of cuisines at one meal. You can get anything off the Internet at any time of year. It's fantastic.

How does your book compare to other similar ones on the market?

This book is a lot more contemporary. We're not living in the past half-century, and we're not going back to the '20s, like the Joy of Cooking book is going to do. This is for people who are interested in a modern take on American cooking.