QUICK GUIDE TO THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS RECIPES.

By Robert JayMisch '25. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1969. 114 pp. $2.95.

Last year at least one reviewer of books for the holiday market took a lot of space to lament the uselessness of expensive volumes by those "cooks" who are bachelors with lots of money and sherry, ladies who do well by hating to make meals, or yoghurt lovers.

Chef Misch, a dedicated researcher and (most likely) diner, is none of these but the author of a most happy little book. In it are 110 world recipes between covers small enough to hold on the subway (where it might occur to you that this could be a pleasanter country if we natives found time to select, prepare, enjoy, and digest good food).

A "Quick Guide" goes from artichokebottoms colbert to zuppa inglese, leaning naturally to the French but with enough other nations' specialties to keep you busy. The timid will be encouraged by Mr. Misch's non-mystic description of ingredients and by Mac Shepard's drawings. The dedication is fun, too. Didn't everyone first try cooking bacon in butter?

No domestic Swiss cheese for our fondue, though; it produced rope enough to secure the Onassis yacht. And the best paella ever made included the chickens' heads and feet. Real Austrian music is the sound of wooden mallets beating wiener schnitzels into even thinner cutlets, not chops.

But not to carp (no recipe for that), as the author says in his introduction. He has made a wise selection and one which makes honest allowance for necessary substitutions. We may have to use scallions or even plain onions for shallots. Oh, Mr. Misch, from the middle of this N.H. snow bank, if that ain't la truffe!

In 18 years abroad, Mrs. Hier lived in adozen countries and served up meals threetimes a day for a family of five - and morewhen guests were added, which they usuallywere.