She was born in San Francisco, California into a middle-class Jewish family and was educated at public schools and at the University of Seattle. She met Stein in Paris in 1907. Together they hosted a salon that attracted expatriate American writers, such as Ernest Hemingway and Sherwood Anderson, and avant-garde painters, including Picasso, Matisse, and Braque.
Acting as Stein's cook, secretary, and general organizer, Toklas remained a background figure until Stein published her memoirs in 1933 under the teasing title The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.
After the death of Gertrude Stein in 1946, Ms. Toklas published her own literary memoir, a 1954 book that mixed reminiscences and recipes under the title The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book. The most famous recipe therein (actually contributed by her friend Brion Gysin) was called "Hashisch Fudge", a mixture of fruit, nuts, spices, and "canibus sativa" [sic]. This lent her name to the range of cannabis concoctions called Alice B. Toklas brownies.
In 1963 she published her autobiography, What Is Remembered.
Alice Babette Toklas (