25 Foods Served at Vincent Price’s Private Hollywood Dinner Parties

Cooking Summary

The video presents 25 foods associated with Vincent Price’s dinner parties and cookbook. Most descriptions give techniques rather than exact quantities; use ingredients “to taste” where no amount is specified.

Dishes and Methods

25. Baking-Powder Biscuits

Combine flour, baking powder, salt, and cold butter cut in until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Stir in milk only until the dough comes together; don’t overwork it. Pat it out by hand, cut straight down with a glass without twisting, and bake in a hot oven for 12 minutes.

24. Caramels

Cook sugar, cream, butter, and corn syrup to the right temperature. The video gives no target temperature, but stresses a narrow window of about 10 degrees: too cool and the caramel won’t set; too hot and it becomes hard. Pay close attention during the roughly 4 minutes when the temperature matters most.

23. Hangtown Fry

Render bacon until crisp and set aside. Dredge oysters in flour and cracker crumbs; fry them in the bacon fat until their edges curl. Pour beaten eggs over the oysters, return crumbled bacon to the pan, and cook until the eggs are soft, not browned.

22. Oysters Rockefeller

Set oysters on the half shell on rock salt so they sit level. Top with a green sauce of puréed herbs, butter, and breadcrumbs; bake in a very hot oven until the tops blister. The video notes that Antoine’s restaurant says its version contains no spinach, despite spinach appearing in many other versions.

21. Gazpacho

Blend tomatoes, cucumber, green pepper, garlic, stale bread soaked in water, sherry vinegar, salt, and olive oil. Add the oil in a steady stream until the soup becomes pale orange-pink and creamy. Strain and chill for several hours. The bread is essential to the soup’s texture.

20. Chiles Rellenos

Blister poblano chiles over a direct flame, then cover them in a bowl so they steam and loosen their skins. Peel gently without tearing, slit and remove the seeds, and stuff with cheese. Roll in flour. Make the coating by beating egg whites to stiff peaks and folding in the yolks. Fry in hot oil, turning once, and drain on paper.

19. Caesar Salad

In a wooden bowl, crush garlic with the back of a spoon and remove the pieces. Work in anchovy, add an egg coddled in boiling water for 1 minute, then add lemon, Worcestershire sauce, and olive oil in a thin stream while turning the bowl. Add whole romaine leaves, Parmesan, and croutons. Turn the bowl no more than six times to avoid wilting the salad.

18. Black Bean Soup

Soak black turtle beans overnight. Simmer for hours with a ham bone, onion, celery, and bay leaf until the beans collapse. Purée and push through a sieve; thin with stock and stir in dry sherry off the heat. Serve with a thin slice of lemon and chopped hard-boiled egg.

17. Cheese Soufflé

Make a thick béchamel and let it cool slightly. Beat in egg yolks one at a time, then add grated Gruyère, mustard, nutmeg, and salt. Beat egg whites separately to firm peaks; stir a spoonful into the base, then gently fold in the rest, stopping while some white streaks remain.

Pour into a buttered dish whose sides are dusted with grated cheese. Bake in a moderate oven; don’t open the oven or check on it. Serve immediately, since it begins to fall as soon as it leaves the oven.

16. Paella

Use a wide, shallow pan. Brown the meat in oil and push it to the edges; cook a tomato, garlic, and pepper sofrito until nearly dry. Stir in short-grain rice until translucent, then add hot saffron stock all at once. Do not stir the rice. Listen for faint crackling in the final 2 minutes as the bottom layer, or socarrat, crisps.

15. Vichyssoise

Split leeks lengthwise and rinse between every layer to remove grit. Soften them in butter without browning. Add potatoes and stock; simmer until soft, then purée, sieve, and chill completely. Stir in cream at the end.

14. Steak Diane

Pound a thin beef cut thinner and sear quickly in butter in a shallow pan. Cook shallots and mushrooms in the same pan. Add brandy and tip the pan toward a flame; the video describes the flame lasting about 4 seconds. Swirl in cream and a little mustard to finish the sauce. The tableside flame is presented mainly as theater.

13. Bouillabaisse

Make the broth from small, bony rockfish cooked down with fennel, orange peel, saffron, tomato, and garlic. Press the mixture forcefully through a sieve. Lower firmer fish into the broth in order of how long each takes to cook, and cook them only for a few minutes.

12. Trader Vic’s Charcoal-Roasted Leg of Lamb

Make a marinade from soy sauce, brown sugar, garlic, ginger, dry mustard, curry powder, and grated onion. Work it into deep slashes in a whole leg of lamb and refrigerate overnight. Cook over indirect charcoal heat, turning slowly for about 2 hours, until the outside develops a dark glaze.

11. Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding

Salt a rib of beef, roast it in a hot oven, and then turn the heat down. Rest the meat for a full 30 minutes before carving.

For the pudding, whisk flour, eggs, and milk into a thin batter and let it stand for 1 hour. Heat beef dripping in a tin until smoking, pour in the batter so it sizzles, and bake for 25 minutes without opening the oven door.

10. Cassoulet

Soak white beans overnight. Layer them in a deep earthenware dish with confit duck legs, pork shoulder, garlic sausage, and pig skin; add stock and cook for hours in a low oven. During cooking, break the crust on top and push it into the beans so a new crust forms. The number of repetitions varies by tradition—three, five, or seven—and each one thickens the dish.

9. Crêpes Suzette

Make and stack very thin crêpes in advance. Cook butter, sugar, orange juice, and zest in a flat pan until syrupy. Fold the crêpes into quarters and warm them in the sauce. Add orange liqueur and brandy, light the pan, then tip and spoon the sauce so the flame travels across it.

8. Lobster Thermidor

Cook and split a lobster, remove the meat, and cut it up. Make a sauce from the shells, cream, mustard, and a little cheese; fold the meat back in. Return the mixture to the empty shells and place under a hot grill until browned and blistered.

7. Pressed Duck at La Tour d’Argent

The restaurant’s traditional method is described rather than offered as a practical home recipe. Roast the duck briefly so it remains rare; remove the legs and breasts, then press the carcass in a heavy silver duck press to extract its juices. Reduce the liquid with wine, brandy, and butter into a very dark sauce, and serve thinly sliced breast in it. Diners receive a numbered certificate for the duck.

6. Kedgeree

Gently poach smoked haddock in milk until it flakes. Soften onions in butter with curry powder and turmeric, then stir in cooked, cooled rice. Fold in the flaked fish carefully to keep it in pieces. Top with quartered hard-boiled eggs, chopped parsley, and lemon.

5. Shepherd’s Pie

Use leftover roast lamb, chopped rather than minced. Soften onion and carrot in dripping; add a little flour and stock, plus Worcestershire sauce, and cook until thickened. Put the mixture in a dish, cover with mashed potatoes, and drag a fork across the surface to make ridges. Bake in a hot oven until the top is crisp and gravy bubbles at the edges.

4. Oxtail

Brown oxtail thoroughly in a heavy pot. Add onion, carrot, celery, garlic, and red wine; boil the wine down, then add stock, bay leaf, and thyme. Cover and cook in a low oven for at least 3½ hours, until the connective tissue has softened and the sauce is thick and glossy.

3. Onion Soup

Slowly cook plenty of thinly sliced onions in butter over medium-low heat, stirring for about 45 minutes, until deeply browned and reduced to roughly a quarter of their original volume. Add stock and a splash of wine. Top with toast and grated cheese, then put under the grill until the cheese bubbles.

2. Cooking on a Budget

Price’s Cooking Price-wise is presented as a cookery series and companion book focused on inexpensive, accessible food: cheap cuts, pulses, vegetables, eggs, stuffed vegetables, lentils, and barley. The emphasis is on giving budget ingredients the same care as elaborate restaurant dishes.

1. Slow-Braised Inexpensive Meat

Use a tough, inexpensive cut such as shin, shoulder, cheek, or neck. Dry it thoroughly, then brown it in batches in a heavy pot, leaving space around the pieces so they form a crust.

Set the meat aside; cook onions in the pot, add a spoonful of flour and liquid—stock, wine, beer, or water—and scrape up the browned bits. Return the meat, cover, and cook in a low oven for 3 hours, or 4 hours if needed. Check once near the end and otherwise leave it alone until tender.

General Tips and Equipment

• Techniques and equipment mentioned include a wooden salad bowl, sieve, wide or shallow pans, a heavy pot, a buttered soufflé dish, and, for the restaurant-style pressed duck, a specialized silver press.
• Avoid overworking biscuit dough, tearing chile skins, browning the vichyssoise leeks, stirring paella, opening the oven during Yorkshire pudding or soufflé cooking, and overcrowding the pot when browning meat.
• The video’s central cooking advice is to give food the time and attention it needs; slow cooking and patient browning can make inexpensive ingredients especially good.

Presenter, Channel, and Sources

The channel is The American Appetite; no individual presenter is named in the subtitles. The video references Vincent and Mary Price’s A Treasury of Great Recipes and the Cooking Price-wise series and companion book, as well as dishes associated with Antoine’s, the Coach House, Trader Vic’s, and La Tour d’Argent.