SOURCE: "Suggestions for the Sensitive Palate," The New York Times Book Review, October 9, 1949, p. 25.

An American novelist, journalist, and critic, Stout was best known as the author of the popular "Nero Wolfe" detective mysteries. In the following review of An Alphabet for Gourmets, he lauds Fisher's culinary expertise and writing skills.

It would be fun to argue the question: which is the greater treasure, a gifted cook or a gifted writer on cooking? But M. F. K. Fisher—to stick to the lady's pseudonym—could not be cited in evidence on either side, because she is both. For the first I can offer only hearsay, from people who have had the good fortune to eat at her table; for the second, here is this book I have just read [An Alphabet For Gourmets], the sixth that this authority on cooking and eating has written about food since 1937.

With...