Originally published in 1973, and filled with the strangest food porn you've ever seen, Salvador Dalí's surreal cookbook is returning soon to a bookstore near you. Les Diners de Gala is chock-full of unsettling food art and recipes from some of the highest-class restaurants the 1960s and '70s had to offer, including "Frog Pasties" and "Toffee with Pine Cones."
Yummy.
Only a few hundred copies of Les Diners de Gala have survived the 40-plus years since its first and only print run. Those surviving copies sell for hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars today. Taschen's reprint will go for the much more modest cover price of $59.99. The German publisher also sells Dalí by Gilles Néret and Dalí: The Paintings by Robert Descharnes and Néret.
From Taschen:
This reprint features all 136 recipes over 12 chapters, specially illustrated by Dalí, and organized by meal courses, including aphrodisiacs. The illustrations and recipes are accompanied by Dalí’s extravagant musings on subjects such as dinner conversation: “The jaw is our best tool to grasp philosophical knowledge."
All these rich recipes can be cooked at home, although some will require practiced skill and a well-stocked pantry. This is cuisine of the old school, with meals by leading French chefs from such stellar Paris restaurants as Lasserre, La Tour d’Argent, Maxim’s, and Le Train Bleu. Good taste, however voluptuous, never goes out of fashion. In making this exceptionally rare book available to a wide audience, TASCHEN brings an artwork, a practical cookbook, and a multisensory adventure to today’s kitchens.
Dalí: Les Diners de Gala is available for pre-order now. Pick it up from your favorite retailer on Nov. 20.
Image: Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons
