Charlotte Turgeon

Christmas Eve - 1990

Charlotte sits at the head of the table in the dining room of her condominium unit in Amherst, Massachusetts. In her late 80s with curly hair, rosy cheeks, thick-framed glasses and her hands beside her plate, she smiles and looks around at the twenty or so guests seated at her formal dining room table. At the far end of the table her son Tom, with the same rosy cheeks and smile, ensures that everyone’s glass contains some holiday cheer. The seating is tight; a few kids share space on a piano bench. Adult children and grandchildren sit patiently while younger children poke curiously at the cuisine plated before them. The gathered fall silent and turn to the head of the table. As Charlotte raises her glass, others follow. “Thank you all for coming and Merry Christmas. Now let’s eat.” “Merry Christmas,” the guests reply. With that, napkins fall to laps, forks and knives clink gently on family china, and all take the first tastes of the evening meal.

The menu is distinctly French: carrots with a brown sugar and honey glaze with a hint of mint; whipped potatoes with garlic; broccoli with a cream sauce, possibly some foie gras and, of course, a roast beef. Charlotte’s roasts are prepared to perfection, cooked to well-done at the ends and medium rare to rare toward the center so that all guests receive a cut to their liking. Tonight, gravy boats hold a Nobis sauce, a light-colored blend of egg, vinegar, oil, French mustard chives, and garlic to complement the roast. For the youngest guests, a serving of macaroni and cheese as only a chef would prepare it: large pasta in a creamy Gruyere with a light coating of bread crumbs toasted to a golden crisp. Sumptuous cuisine with subtle aromas and nuanced flavor. All compliment Charlotte’s meal, to which she replies, “Oh, it’s really nothing with a little preparation and some help.”

At one end of the table Tom and Dick, cousins who’ve known each other since birth, laugh and reminisce. Both academics, they swap stories of youth, college and teaching. Across from them, Karen is seated next to Fred, a relatively recent addition to the table, who joined the extended family through marriage to Charlotte’s granddaughter Sarah. Karen provides a roadmap to navigate the relatives. Charlotte takes it all in, ever the matriarch as the oldest and one of the few surviving members of her generation.

Ask Charlotte about attending Paris’ prestigious Cordon Bleu cooking school, her friendship with Julia Child, or the many cookbooks she authored, and she may tell a story or two but she dismisses praise and will quickly turn the conversation to you or to family. She is more interested in learning what you are doing than dwelling on her accomplishments. She sits upright and when not enjoying the feast, when listening, she places her hands on either side of her plate, palms in. She turns slightly to give you her full attention and punctuates thoughts, yours or hers, by gently patting your hand or, if you are not within easy reach, patting the table in your direction. Those lucky enough to sit one or two places from Charlotte hear stories of shopping in Paris street markets and picking over produce with her husband King, or perhaps her thoughts on the latest cooking craze, maybe the direction of the church, politics, or even local gossip.

Tom’s wife Peggy gets up to refill a basket of dinner rolls. Charlotte’s kitchen is somewhat larger than some others in her condominium development containing features that remind a visitor that she is no ordinary cook: professional grade appliances, a cavernous pantry stocked with all that a chef could want, and an abundance of counter space. Above the counter and stovetop hang mirrors so that someone in the center of the kitchen can look directly down onto the counter: a remnant of the days when she taught cooking. Peggy and a few others transfer food from the oven to serving dishes, shuttling second and third helpings out to the table.

After an hour, Charlotte signals the end of the dinner course with “Is we class or do we pass: We pass”. With that, the guests pass dirty plates to the head of the table where a grandchild, under Peggy’s watchful eye, gathers the plates, three or four at a time, to bring to the kitchen while Peggy distributes smaller plates and clean forks.

Tom returns from the kitchen with a large plate bearing dessert and places it in front of Charlotte. “Now not everyone likes this, but everyone gets some. Leave it on your plate if you don’t like it.” As tradition dictates, Tom and a few others break into the song

Oh, bring us some figgy pudding,

Oh, bring us some figgy pudding,

Oh, bring us some figgy pudding,

And bring it right here.

Good tidings we bring

To you and your kin;

We wish you a merry Christmas

And a happy New Year!

A few continue with

We won't go till we get some,

We won't go till we get some…

But Charlotte tempers the singers’ enthusiasm.

After dinner, Charlotte retires to the living room with most of the guests as Peggy and a few grandchildren clear the table and clean up. Several plates of figgy pudding return to the kitchen largely untouched despite generous servings of the sweet, rum-infused hard sauce. Packing leftovers, loading the dishwasher, and cleaning pans and serving platters takes little time and soon all are gathered in Charlotte’s living room. It is late and Charlotte has an early morning with Christmas breakfast, some presents with the grandchildren and, of course, mass at the Episcopal Church with Reverend Clark. Soon most of the guests gather their coats and take their leave. A few family members linger as Charlotte moves to a comfortable chair and leans back. “That was a fine evening,” she says. “A fine evening”.

From her New York Times Obituary

Charlotte S. Turgeon, Who Popularized French Cuisine, Is Dead at 97

Charlotte Snyder Turgeon, whose cookbooks helped popularize French cuisine in America, even before those of her college classmate Julia Child, died on Sept. 22 in Amherst, Mass. She was 97.

She died of natural causes, said her son Charles, who said she had Alzheimer’s disease.

Mrs. Turgeon worked on dozens of books with a number of emphases — healthy cooking, Scandinavian cooking, cooking for large numbers of people and seasonal cooking, among others — but her central interest was French food. Notably, she was an editor and translator of the first English version of the French cooking encyclopedia and culinary bible Larousse Gastronomique.

Her friendship with Mrs. Child began at Smith College, where they were both in the class of 1934. But while her friend did not discover the joy of eating in Paris until the 1940s, Mrs. Turgeon jumped right in. Marrying after college, she traveled to France, where her new husband, a college professor, was taking a sabbatical. At his suggestion she went to the Cordon Bleu cooking school in 1937.

“Before that, she would tell you she didn’t know how to boil an egg,” her son said.

Her first book came about after a dinner party she gave. A surprise guest had turned out to be a book editor who needed a substitute for a writer who had abandoned a project, the translation of a family cookbook first published in France in 1903. Mrs. Turgeon took on the project, and the book, “Tante Marie’s Kitchen,” was published in 1949. Several more followed over the next decade, a time when Mrs. Turgeon also became a regular reviewer of cookbooks for The New York Times.

In 1961, the same year that Mrs. Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” appeared, Mrs. Turgeon and an editing collaborator, Nina Froud, brought out the first English translation of Larousse Gastronomique, by the chef Prosper Montagné, which was first published in 1938.

Charlotte Snyder was born in Marblehead, Mass., on June 21, 1912. Her father owned a meat-packing company. Her husband, Frederick King Turgeon, known as King, taught French and other Romance languages at Amherst. He died in 1987. In addition to her son Charles, who lives in Hollywood, Md., she is survived by a sister, Margaret, of Fullerton, Calif.; a second son, Thomas, of Gambier, Ohio; a daughter, Nan White of Norwood, Mass.; eight grandchildren; and 12 great-grandchildren.

Mrs. Turgeon and Mrs. Child were lifelong friends. In 2005, the year after Mrs. Child’s death, Mrs. Turgeon reminisced about her in an interview with the journal Gastronomica. At one point she said that she and Mrs. Child’s husband, Paul, did not like each other. He had always thought of her as a threat to his wife, Mrs. Turgeon said. But he was wrong, she insisted. Julia wanted to communicate how wonderful French cuisine was, she said, while she herself had a far more practical purpose.

“When King and I got back from his sabbatical in France, I realized that there were all these young Amherst faculty wives who were scared to death of cooking and had to live on a nickel, the poor things,” Mrs. Turgeon said. “I wrote my cookbooks for them, and others like them. I just wanted to make the cooking part of life intelligible and fun.”

"Aunt" Charlotte was Ted/Karen/Steve's first cousin twice removed. She was their paternal grandfather's first cousin.