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In the Kennedy Style: Magical Evenings in the Kennedy White House
Letitia Baldrige
Doubleday, $29.95
Review by Emily Looney
(CNN) -- Ballerinas pirouette in frothy skirts across the White House lawn in a picture on the inside covers of "In the Kennedy Style: Magical Evenings in the Kennedy White House", and this book is just as pleasant and light.
The current trend to trash politicians' private lives finds no place in the pages of etiquette maven Letitia Baldrige, Jackie Kennedy's old friend who served as her social secretary from November 1960 through mid-1963.
The book does not raise analytical questions of Kennedy style versus substance, because in Baldrige's view, style is substance in the social setting, and that's a good thing. It can be hard to disagree, especially when presented with her evidence.
With intimate recollections of six parties, Baldrige makes her point that the Kennedys enhanced the nation's cultural awareness and profile in no small part through luncheons and dinner parties with high-profile guests, haute cuisine and highbrow cultural entertainment.
"With their appreciation of history unfolding right before their eyes, and with their sense of style, they made an indelible impression on their country and the world," Baldrige writes.
The featured soirees include:
* "an exquisite alfresco state dinner and concert for 132 guests" at Mount Vernon, George Washington's Virginia home, and
* "the Brains Dinner" -- a White House evening for Nobel laureates whom Kennedy toasted as "the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."
Baldrige peppers her book with behind-the-scenes incidentals, including the occasional gaffe by her and even the president, that Camelot buffs will love.
The Kennedy White House chef, Rene Verdon, expresses a gracious gratitude at the opportunity of working for them, and he laces his recipes with polite memories.
This book is worth looking at simply as a cookbook, rich with cream and other too-historic flavors. Verdon, a San Francisco chef, writes in a straightforward way that will encourage the bold home cook to try at least some of his creations.
He includes recipes both for the formal events Baldrige describes and the "at home" meals he prepared for the family.
The combination reflects the Kennedy aura of seeming extraordinary and every day at the same time: they ate not only fancy food but also the likes of pasta and cream of tomato soup. A Jackie favorite called "Floating Islands" -- meringues in sauce -- resonates 1960s nostalgia.
Baldrige and Verdon combine party prep detail and recipes -- style and substance -- to create a tasteful diversion with their book, a result surely not too unlike the Kennedy soirees themselves.
Emily Looney is a senior writer at CNN Interactive.
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