Courtesy of Carol Brock

Carol Brock, longtime food journalist and culinary expert, had just called back with some other tidbits. Sometime in the 1970s, she had hosted famous chef and food writer James Beard at her home, serving him a “farmhouse supper” of stuffed cabbage served with pita (“which was quite of-the-moment at the time”) and other goodies.

And then there was the time renowned chef Julia Child complimented her on a black-tie dinner that Brock’s women’s group had worked painstakingly to put together at a fancy New York hotel during a waiter’s strike.

More about the lunches she prepared for the famous. More about attending press parties at top-name restaurants featuring top-name chefs. Meeting so many chefs.

They’re details that have made her life delicious, not only in the taste sense but in the to-be-savored moments. She speaks wistfully and with flourish, in a lovely New York accent brushed with soft laughs. You can tell she thoroughly enjoys the memories.

When I tell her that even after nearly three hours on the phone and pages of notes, I feel like I’ve hardly touched the surface of her life, she tells me, “Well, I’ve been busy every minute for the last 85 years.”

Hers has been the kind of life in which one story eases into another, tangents leading to more questions, leading to more tangents. I couldn’t always recall where we had begun, but she certainly could. She always knew where we were.

Twenty-three years at Good Housekeeping magazine, mainly as the hostess editor (a position created for her), starting in 1944. Two and a half years as food editor with Parents magazine. Then 15 years as food reporter with the New York Daily News. Thirteen years after that as a restaurant critic for the Times Ledger. Founder of Les Dames d’Escoffier, now the premiere association of women culinary professionals. We could easily spend hours talking about each. She never missed work and only stopped long enough to give birth to three sons, working “until the first contraction each time,” she said. “Fortunately, I’ve had great health and energy.”

I was catching her at a time when she was bidding farewell to a part of her life—a collection of 4,000 cookbooks that have been like old friends, placeholders marking a lifetime in food, wine, and hospitality. “I started collecting them when I was a little girl,” she said. The very first held a recipe for “Yummy Eggs”—a scrambled egg mixture cooked in the top of a double boiler that came out like custard. The most recent, which will stay on her shelves, is the first-ever cookbook published by Les Dames, a collection of more than 120 recipes by its members and “dedicated to all women of vision, energy, and brilliance, most especially to our founder, Carol Brock.” (Click Cooking with Les Dames d'Escoffier to read Silver Planet’s review.)

The other books were in the midst of being boxed up for travel to their new home: the library at the State University of New York at Delhi, where a special collections room is being built to house them.