her own learning was inspired in childhood by her mother, aunts and great-aunts, whose cooking represented many regions of france. she dedicated her third book, "when french women cook" (athenaeum, 1976), to writing down their recipes, most recorded for the first time, in an attempt to preserve a record of a france long since gone, and also determined to "bring back to life" the "women with worn hands stained by vegetables peeled, parched by work in the house, garden or fields, wrinkled by age and experience", so her readers will know "that there was once a civilisation that was human, tender, enjoyable and loveable." her dedication reads "this book, in its own way a feminist manifesto, is dedicated to the millions of women who have spent millennia in kitchens creating unrecognised masterpieces".