It is axiomatic that anything can happen in the publishing business and generally does. However, one thing I never expected to get mixed up in was recipes. Nevertheless, at the risk of temporarily turning this letter into a treatise on cookery. I can now report that we have on hand about 1,000 of your favorite recipes.

We got them by asking a cross-section of TIME's women readers for them, our purpose being to see what their replies would reveal about their cooking customs and the food products they use.

Although passing on a tried & true recipe is an old American custom, we were not prepared for the enthusiasm evoked by our request or for the discussions of home problems and the philosophizing about cooking that accompanied many of the recipes. One reader, in submitting a casserole called Baked Macedoine wrote that its U.S. ingredients were hardly as exciting as those she had been used to in Alaska where "I cooked many wonderful meals of moose, caribou, wild sheep and goat, halibut and salmon fresh from the ocean, grayling and trout from the clear, cold rivers. Bear has even been on my menu."

Accompanying a recipe for Rhode Island Johnny Cake was the notation that "it was once called journey cake, I am told, because travelers mixed the corn meal with water or snow (we prefer the local white corn meal). But let me warn you that the shade of my Great Aunt Adeline, from whom I originally got the recipe, will surely haunt you if you put anything but butter on this mouth-watering concoction. Syrup and such will overcome the delicate flavor."

Sentiments like the following were also frequently expressed: "It is my observation that well-informed women who lift their sights above their immediate surroundings are the ones who place cooking among the creative arts" and "Women who keep up with current events like to eat, too, you know, and the best way to be sure you eat well is to cook it yourself."

As for the recipes themselves, they have one thing in common:

a regional flavor as distinctive as the home towns of many of their senders: Contoocook, N.H.; Battle Mountain, Nevada; Olive Branch, Mississippi; Pocatello, Idaho; Vienna, Georgia;

Fort Defiance, Arizona; Conesville, Iowa. Otherwise, these favorite recipes span the whole range of cookery and were usually accompanied by comments like the following:

Chert's French Creole Pecan Pie ("My great-grandmother said her mother's family had the recipe . . . after eating, it is usually best to pull up an easy chair and relax").

Cream Biscuits ("These biscuits come as near to uniting the family at the breakfast table as anything").

Mushroom Woodcock ("This is a dish like the basic black dress: you can garnish it with accessories").

Stuffed Quahogs ("This should have no other companion but ice cold beer").

Pease Pottage ("Taken from The Compleat Housewife or Accomplished Gentlewoman's Companion, published in London in 1753").

Cranberry Upside-down Cake ("I must stop because I'm making myself hungry").

Chicken Cecelia ("All my cooking is done by ear so these amounts may be varied at will").

Southern Spoon Bread ("I have just lost 15 Ibs. by giving up delights like this").

Old-fashioned German Coffee Cake ("To my mother, it was a Saturday night ritual").

Confronted by all this delectable eating, TIME'S merchandising director, Stuart Powers, has settled on one recipe that especially appeals to his gastronomic faculties. For anyone my size, it seems a bit too luxurious, but here it is (see box).

At present all of these 1,000-odd recipes are being tested by Home Economist Florence Arfmann--and we would be happy to hear from any of you (men, too) who have a favorite recipe you would like to send us. When the testing is over, we hope--but cannot at this time promise--to combine a representative group of recipes into a cook book.

Cordially yours,

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.