The event was a success and the two women became friends. She was so impressed that she hired Lukins to provide croissants with red and black raspberry mousse for a press breakfast. One of those dates was Julee Rosso, an ad director for a textile firm. Lukins, a Cordon Bleu graduate and married mother of two, called the business the Other Woman (slogan: “So delicious, so discreet, and I deliver”) many of her clients were young bachelors who wanted to impress their dates while entertaining at home. The menu was composed of dishes she had encountered in her travels throughout Europe and the Middle East, particularly around the Mediterranean. The book’s origins can be traced to 1976, when Sheila Lukins launched a catering business from her kitchen in the Dakota, an exclusive apartment building on Central Park West. If you owned a copy, you were someone who would never dream of serving meatloaf shellacked with ketchup or a casserole seasoned with cream of mushroom soup, but you were also too busy to devote entire Saturday afternoons to worshiping at the altar of Julia Child. (Ephron was a Silver Palate fan.) Even outside of New York, the presence of a Silver Palate cookbook was a sign of a stylish and modern cook, a connoisseur of imported cheese and fine wine.

You can bet that before they were forced to play Pictionary at that dinner party, Harry and Sally were fed salmon mousse and chicken Marbella or maybe osso bucco. A world synonymous (at least in the mind of the average moviegoer) with Woody Allen and then Nora Ephron. The cookbook was a product of its time and place: New York’s Upper West Side in the late 1970s and early ’80s.

But the source of their popularity, at least in home kitchens, was all but undisputed: The Silver Palate Cookbook, originally published in 1982, more than 2.5 million copies sold. Many loved these foods many others derided them as pretentious yuppie garbage. By the end of the decade, they had become part of the atmosphere hanging over American society, like a giant cloud of Aqua Net holding up so many teased bangs. If you lived through the 1980s there’s a decent chance that, at some point, you crossed paths with raspberry vinaigrette, pesto, and arugula.

The silver palate cookbook