Alice Babette Tok-las met Gertrude Stein in 1907, the day she arrived in Paris. They remained togeth-er for 39 years until Stein’s death in 1946. While Stein became the cen-ter of the avant-garde art world, host-ing an exclu-sive salon that wel-comed the likes of Ernest Hem-ing-way, Pablo Picas-so, James Joyce, Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzger-ald, Tok-las large-ly pre-ferred to stay in Stein’s shad-ow, serv-ing as her sec-re-tary, edi-tor and assis-tant.
That changed in 1933 when Stein wrote The Auto-bi-og-ra-phy of Alice B. Tok-las – a retelling of the couple’s life togeth-er with Tok-las serv-ing as nar-ra-tor. The book is Stein’s most acces-si-ble and best-sell-ing work. It also turned the shy, self-effac-ing Tok-las into a lit-er-ary fig-ure.
After Stein’s death, Tok-las pub-lished The Alice B. Tok-las Cook-book in 1954, which com-bined per-son-al rec-ol-lec-tions of her time with Stein along with recipes and mus-ings about French cui-sine. Yet it wasn’t her sto-ries about tend-ing to the wound-ed dur-ing WWI or her opin-ions on mus-sels that made the book famous. Instead, it was the inclu-sion of a recipe giv-en to her by Moroc-can-based artist Brion Gysin called “Hashish Fudge.”
In this 1963 record-ing from Paci-fi-ca Radio, Tok-las reads her noto-ri-ous recipe. The snack “might pro-vide an enter-tain-ing refresh-ment for a Ladies’ Bridge Club or a chap-ter meet-ing of the DAR,” Tok-las notes in her reedy, dig-ni-fied voice. Then she gets on to the recipe itself:
Take one tea-spoon black pep-per-corns, one whole nut-meg, four aver-age sticks of cin-na-mon, one tea-spoon corian-der. These should all be pul-ver-ized in a mor-tar. About a hand-ful each of stoned dates, dried figs, shelled almonds and peanuts: chop these and mix them togeth-er. A bunch of Cannabis sati-va can be pul-ver-ized. This along with the spices should be dust-ed over the mixed fruit and nuts, knead-ed togeth-er. About a cup of sug-ar dis-solved in a big pat of but-ter. Rolled into a cake and cut into pieces or made into balls about the size of a wal-nut, it should be eat-en with care. Two pieces are quite suf-fi-cient.
Tok-las con-cedes that get-ting the key ingre-di-ent “can present cer-tain dif-fi-cul-ties” and rec-om-mends find-ing the stuff in the wild, which might have been pos-si-ble to do in the ear-ly 1960s. Nowa-days, the best course of action is to move to Wash-ing-ton, Col-orado or Uruguay.
In the record-ing, Tok-las then goes on to recall how hashish fudge came to be includ-ed into her book.
“The recipe was inno-cent-ly includ-ed with-out my real-iz-ing that the hashish was the accent-ed part of the recipe,” she says with-out a trace of face-tious-ness. “I was shocked to find that Amer-i-ca wouldn’t accept it because it was too dan-ger-ous.”
“It nev-er went into the Amer-i-can edi-tion,” she says. “The Eng-lish are braver. We’re not coura-geous about that sort of thing.”
Note: An ear-li-er ver-sion of this post appeared on our site in Jan-u-ary 2014.
Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange-les-based writer and film-mak-er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol-ly-wood Reporter, and oth-er pub-li-ca-tions. You can fol-low him at @jonccrow.
Relat-ed Con-tent:
Gertrude Stein Gets a Snarky Rejec-tion Let-ter from Pub-lish-er (1912)
Hear Gertrude Stein Read Works Inspired by Matisse, Picas-so, and T.S. Eliot (1934)
Gertrude Stein Recites ‘If I Told Him: A Com-plet-ed Por-trait of Picas-so’
Great arti-cle on a famous part of 60’s drug cul-ture,
The recipe is won-der-ful! Tastes great. I made mine into the ball shapes. My fam-i-ly reunion went so well, every-body got along, no bick-er-ing, lots of laugh-ing. Will be my must make every year.