The origin of scrambled eggs 'James Bond'

James Bond’s fondness for scrambled eggs is well-known to readers of the novels, and in the short story ‘007 in New York’, Bond is even given his own scrambled eggs recipe. But what’s the origin of this recipe? Was it Ian Fleming’s invention or was someone else responsible for it? Atticus, the Sunday Times column that Fleming wrote between 1953 and 1957, has the answer.
 

Scrambled eggs 'James Bond'

In the short story, we learn that Bond had a particular recipe for scrambled eggs, which he had instructed the kitchen staff of New York’s Plaza Hotel to make on a previous visit. ‘Scrambled eggs “James Bond”’, given in full as a footnote to the story, is for ‘four individualists’ and requires 12 eggs, 5-6 ounces of butter, and some finely chopped herbs. It also includes the notable instruction to whisk butter into the eggs when the eggs are ‘slightly still more moist than you would wish for eating.’  

The short story, along with the recipe, first appeared in the Sunday Herald Tribune on 29th September 1963. However, the recipe had previously been published in 1961 in a collection of favourite recipes of the famous, Celebrity Cooking for You. Ian Fleming’s scrambled eggs recipe was essentially the same as that which appeared in ‘007 in New York’, but suggested that cream could be used instead of the final piece of butter. 

But the celebrity cookbook was not the first time that the recipe had appeared in print. Fleming’s Atticus column of 25th December 1955 included a small piece about scrambled eggs under the heading ‘Oeufs Attique’. Fleming began: ‘I suppose that the “Chef of the Year” is Mr Bartolemo Calderoni of May Fair Hotel [in London], for he was chosen to cook this year’s banquet for the International Academy of Chefs.’ Fleming continued: ‘Since, I dare say, that 90 per cent of the adult population believe that their scrambled eggs are better than mine, I made it my duty to obtain from this supreme authority his final five-star word on the vital subject.’

The result, Mr Calderoni’s recipe for scrambled eggs, duly appeared below that piece. There are slight differences between this recipe and later versions. For instance, the recipe is for two, so the quantities are halved, and the recipe suggests that it’s not worth using fewer eggs as too much egg sticks to the saucepan (a tip that would survive to the celebrity cookbook, but not ‘007 in New York’). There is also no mention of herbs. However, much of the recipe is more or less identical to those published subsequently, including the instruction to add butter ‘while the eggs are slightly more moist than you would wish to eat them.’ 

Thus, scrambled eggs ‘James Bond’ is really scrambled eggs ‘Bartolemo Calderoni’. Ann Fleming recorded in her letters that Ian liked his omelettes very baveuse – moist and runny – so it’s no wonder that he was so taken with Bartolemo Calderoni’s recipe. 

The recipe demonstrates once again that Atticus is a rich source for information on the Bond books, with many of the ideas and memes that appear in the novels having their origins in Fleming’s Sunday Times column.
 
References:
Amory, M (ed.), 1985 The Letters of Ann Fleming, Collins Harvill, London
Chancellor, H, 2005 James Bond: The Man and his World, John Murray, London 
Gilbert, J, 2012 Ian Fleming: The Bibliography, Queen Ann Press, London

Atticus and the origin of Bond's winning bridge hand

A while ago, I described how Ian Fleming’s Atticus column in the Sunday Times, which he wrote from 1953 to 1956, provided him with material for the Bond novels. The reverse was also true. Occasionally, ideas that appeared in the Bond novels would also crop up again in Atticus.

Take Moonraker, for example. In the epic bridge game between James Bond and Hugo Drax, Bond wins by means of the redoubled grand slam, beating Drax with a combination of trumps and diamonds. 

Dwight D Eisenhower, US President from 1953 to 1961, won a game of bridge with a similar hand. In Atticus of June 19th, 1955 (two months after the publication of Moonraker), we’re told that Eisenhower, a brilliant bridge player, who liked to play trumps as an opening lead, won a famous game just before the end of the Second World War against fellow US army generals Gruenther, Clark and Moses. The hand was redoubled, and Eisenhower prevailed with a grand slam in diamonds. Coincidence, or the source of the game between Bond and Drax?

Later in Moonraker, we learn that Drax owns a Mercedes 300 S, ‘the sports model with the disappearing hood’, and painted white in honour of the famous Mercedes victories at Le Mans and Nürburgring.
 

Cover artwork of the first edition of Moonraker (Cape, 1955)

Atticus mentions a similar model on July 3rd, 1955. In the piece, Atticus reported that American journalist John Bentley (‘the best American writer on fast motoring’) considered that Le Mans had lost its purpose, which was to provide a testing ground for production vehicles. Instead, limited-production cars and prototypes were permitted, and ‘the true spirit of Le Mans vanished.’ 

The Mercedes 300 SLR is mentioned as a case in point. This model is similar to Drax’s car, but, we’re told, its air-brakes are relocated behind the centres of gravity and pressure, which steady the car on racing turns and mininise tail slides, but ‘would be useless’ on normal highways. The piece is accompanied by a photograph of a white Mercedes 300 SLR driven by Pierre Levegh (who tragically lost his life at Le Mans the previous month). The piece has only a tangential connection to Moonraker, but it nevertheless draws on Fleming’s fascination of motor racing that informed passages of the Bond novel.

Atticus gave Ian Fleming the opportunity to research and read up on subjects that would prove useful for the Bond books, but Fleming also turned to the Bond books for material for his later writing.

What Raymond Chandler didn't say

The other day I picked up my copy of the Triad/Panther edition of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, first published in 1977, and glancing at the back cover read the familiar quotation: 'Bond is what every man would like to be, and what every woman would like to have between her sheets.' The author was Sunday Times book critic Raymond Mortimer.

I then picked up the later Penguin edition (showing the Richie Fahey design), and saw that the quotation was repeated. Except that it was attributed to Raymond Chandler. The same attribution, along with a reference to the Sunday Times source, was made on the Penguin 'abstract art' edition. And a shortened version of the quote and Chandler/Sunday Times attribution will be repeated again on the back of the Vintage 'There is only one Bond' edition.

So who does the quotation belong to? The only way to find out was to return to Raymond Mortimer's Sunday Times review of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, published on 30th March 1963. The phrase was indeed there, though not quite in the same form as that shown on the Triad and Penguin paperbacks. The actual line is:

'James Bond is what every man would like to be, and what every woman would like between her sheets.'

So what of Raymond Chandler? Chandler wrote two reviews of Bond books. The first, a review of Diamonds are Forever, was published in the Sunday Times on 25th March 1956. The second, reviewing Dr No, was published on 31st March 1958. In neither review did Chandler write anything that resembled Raymond Mortimer's line. It is possible that Chandler did say something similar, but it has been difficult to find its original source (and of course Chandler can't have written the line in connection with On Her Majesty's Secret Service, as he died in 1959).

I can't help feeling that Chandler never wrote a phrase on the lines of 'Bond is what is every man would like to be', and that the association between the author and phrase is apocryphal. I also wonder whether the error in attribution occurred simply from the confusion of both writers being called Raymond. What is interesting, though, is the fact that copying-errors in the attribution and words have been perpetuated through various editions of Bond paperbacks. The inaccurate quotation has become a meme in its own right, being spread and replicated without reference to the original source. 

Images: 
On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Design copyright Triad/Panther Books 1977
On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Design copyright Penguin/Richie Fahey 2006 

Atticus: Ian Fleming's nursery of ideas

Sometimes an idea takes a while to develop before finding expression in a book. Ian Fleming's regular Sunday Times column is a case in point. Under the pseudonym Atticus, Fleming wrote the 'People and things' column for the London paper between November 1953 and August 1955. Reading his articles now, one is struck by the number of stories and ideas that would later be adapted for use in his James Bond novels.

For instance, Fleming's interest in squids and octopuses, as shown by Bond's battle with a squid in Dr No (1957) and the short story 'Octopussy' (1966), was piqued earlier. Atticus of 4th April 1954 included a piece about octopuses and squids, noting among other facts the squid's use of jet-propulsion and the largeness of some octopuses' eyes.

Then, on 18th April, Atticus wrote a piece on Japanese cormorant fishing. Atticus explained to readers how the little port of Gifu, 120 miles south of Tokyo, was the centre of this type of fishing, which was carried out at night using a lantern attached to a pole on the boat to attract the fish, and several cormorants tied snugly by rings at their necks to lines to plunge into the water and collect the fish. The idea of cormorant fishing would resurface ten years later in You Only Live Twice (1964), when Bond accompanies Kissy Suzuki on a fishing expedition.

As John Griswold suggested in his Annotations and Chronologies for Ian Fleming's Bond stories, Magic 44, the code-breaking/intelligence gathering system used by the Japanese Secret Service in You Only Live Twice, was named after 'Magic', the cover name given to the deciphering of Second World War Japanese diplomatic signals by the United States. Fleming had been interested in this before he wrote the novel; he referred to 'Magic' in his Atticus column of 20th June 1954.

The same article also included the first of two pieces on diamonds that Fleming wrote as Atticus two years before the publication of Diamonds Are Forever (1956), and three years before The Diamond Smugglers (1957). In the first, Fleming informed readers about the properties of a 'good blue-white', which, among other insights, has a mass of 426.5 carats. In the second piece, published on 26th September 1954, Fleming refers to the increased security required at the Diamond Corporation, off Hatton Garden in London.

Heraldry was another topic that featured in Atticus. Fleming wrote two pieces on it – the first, in Atticus of 25th May 1954, on the misuse of grants of arms, and the second, published on January 9th 1955, on the coat of arms of Horatio Nelson – eight years before he wrote the Bond novel, On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963), in which heraldry was an integral part. The stories on diamonds and heraldry that Fleming reported are minor, but potentially important too, as they may have been responsible for drawing his interest in the subjects, which culminated in his writing the two Bond novels.

Ian Fleming was fascinated by facts. Some of the facts he learned while writing his Atticus column were too evidently good to waste in a disposable newspaper. Some of them he remembered and adapted for use in his Bond novels. Other facts may have led him down particular avenues of research, leading to entire novels in which the subject played a key role.