Tucked into Beard’s many cookbooks are informative and playful suggestions for picnicking. He writes, “Wherever it is done, picnicking can be one of the supreme pleasures of outdoor life. At its most elegant, it calls for the accompaniment of the best linens and crystal and china; at its simplest, it needs only a bottle of wine and items purchased from the local delicatessen as one passes through town. I recall a recent picnic in France where we bought rillettes de Tours (in Tours) and elsewhere some excellent salade museau, good bread, ripe tomatoes, and cheese. A bottle of local wine and glasses and plates from the Monoprix helped to make this picnic in a heather field near Le Mans a particularly memorable one. The color and charm of the countryside can make the most modest meal taste superb. Have a picnic at the slightest excuse. It is even fun to have a box lunch and a hot drink in the car on a wintry day, while you look out at a dazzling stretch of landscape.”
The menu for “A Festive Country or Beach Picnic for – 8” in Menus for Entertaining (1965) includes stuffed tomatoes, veal and pork terrine, beef a la Mode Gelée, potato salad or green salad, French bread, butter, cheese, fruit, and angel food cake. Beverages suggested are lightly cooled Beaujolais or California Maintain Red, cognac, kirsch to go with the cake, a great vacuum bottle of hot or iced coffee. “To use nice crystal, attractive plates, and good cutlery goes without saying.”
The “Beer Party for a Large Gathering” includes sausage board, Westphalian ham, boiled or baked ham, cold meatloaf, deviled eggs, caviar eggs, pungent eggs, Coleslaw, senfgurken, dill pickles, Emmenthal cheese, rye bread, pumpernickel and butter, and apple kuchen.
“An Elegant Picnic for the Beach” includes Roquefort loaf, special stuffed eggs, chicken sandwiches, cherry tomatoes, fresh peach ice cream, sand tarts. He suggests bringing along chilled Almaden rose or chilled champagne. (Because Almaden is his sponsor.)
See James Beard Menus for Entertaining (New York, 1965). Other books are The Complete Book of Outdoor Cookery (1955), Delights and Prejudices (1964), and American Cookery (1972).