When French Women Cook

Madeleine Kamman was born Madeleine Marguerite Pin in Courbevoie, France on November 22, 1930. She attended the Sorbonne and studied cooking at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris. She was working as a reservations manager in Paris for Swissair when she met her future husband Alan Kamman. They married in 1960 and moved to the Philadelphia area. In 1968, she was teaching cooking at home and in adult education classes when she wrote a letter to The New York Times food editor criticizing a recipe for snails provençale on toast that was printed in the newspaper.

After moving to Massachusetts, she opened a cooking school and restaurant in Newton Centre. She later taught cooking in Annecy, France and at the Beringer Vineyards in St. Helena, California. She also opened another school and restaurant in Glen, New Hampshire. She wrote several books including The Making of a Cook and When French Women Cook. From 1984 to 1991, she had her own PBS series. She died on July 16, 2018 at the age of 87.

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