Juicy Post: A Cake in Remembrance of Dione Lucas

 A Who’s Who

M.F.K Fisher – check. Elizabeth David – check. Laurie Colwin – probably a check. And who hasn’t read about or read something that Julia Child wrote.  But very few know about Dione Lucas or own one of her cookbooks. And yet, she preceded these culinary icons in presenting classic French cuisine to the American public in classes, restaurants, cookbooks and TV shows. 

 Born in 1909, as a British citizen, her adult life was shaped in the crucible of World War II. Before the war, Dione, still in her late teens, was the first woman to garner the “Grand Diplome” from Henri Paul Pellaprat, the founding chef of the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris. She later founded the Cordon Bleu Cooking School in London with Rosemary Hume. The two partners were forced to  curtail the school and its restaurant during the London Blitz. 

During the war, Dione Lucas, was evacuated to Canada as a young mother with two boys (0ne born with cerebral palsy), while her architect husband stayed behind in the UK to work on Britain’s bomb shelters. She later stayed with relatives in New York City. Once ensconced in Manhattan, Dione  Lucas ran a series of restaurants (The Egg Basket was one in which she singlehandedly created omelets for clients). She taught classes and wrote several cookbooks. She even had a cooking show on television, predating WGBH’s blockbuster “The French Chef.” The producer was a woman, Frances Buss Buch, who gave a charming and revealing interview that has been preserved by the Television Academy Foundation. 

Dione often talked about her work in the kitchen of a hotel restaurant in Hamburg, Germany, where Adolph Hitler dined on her squab preparation (so much for his being vegetarian) — a claim her older son contested. She considered cooking an art form and became cranky when having to answer food science questions. She also launched a new design in knives, inspired by Japanese kitchen cutlery.  Many considered Lucas difficult and dour, traits that may have been caused by long bouts of migraines that were most likely treated with heavy doses of narcotics. Still, to have accomplished all this as a single mother with a son hospitalized frequently  (she and her husband divorced, and he left for England with the other son) Dione Lucas deserves to be recognized for her achievements.

A Different Biscuit

I purchased The Gourmet Cooking School Cookbook some time in the late 1960s, as I had an aunt who had gone to a cooking school in Paris (she told  me that as a debutante in her day, you went to Paris and you took cooking lessons). She would invite me over on  occasional Saturdays and we would cook lunch together. She taught me my first basics of classic Frenchcuisine and introduced me to the wonders of Lapsang Souchong tea and vermouth in the afternoon.  While the book has many recipes that are clearly quite fussy and take up several pages, Lucas has a few less strenuous gems that I still make today. Her Biscuit Milanaise Aux Fraises is one of them. 

I posted this cake on Instagram a few weeks ago, and the number of requests for the recipe truly surprised me. It is an unusual approach to an  Italian sponge cake. I have made it in both a 7-inch pan and an 8-inch pan. The latter will obviously give you a slightly flatter cake – it is the classic European cake that is split into two layers, in contrast to American versions that bake  in two separate layer cake pans. You can make the sponge cake a day ahead, and then do the rest the next day. I tried substituting cornstarch for the potato starch, so you don’t have to make the same mistake. I use a strawberry jam made by Rigoni Di  Asiago in Italy that I get at Mom’s rather than the raspberry or currant jelly she recommends. The combination of strawberry with wild strawberries in this spread makes an  intensely flavored glaze