Food. Without it we would not survive. The same might be said of literature. Throughout the centuries, whether fact or fiction, it has nourished our souls. That the two should be so inexplicably linked should therefore be no surprise.
In selecting dishes for tonight’s meal, from authors ancient and modern, I have aimed to bring together memorable moments in which food has played a part in enabling some of our greatest authors to tell their tales.
Linda Piggott-Vijeh
JACOB’S RED LENTIL SOUP
The Biblical story of Jacob and Esau resonates with many as a story of human weakness and trickery, where a younger brother tricks a hungry older brother into selling him his firstborn birth right for a bowl of soup. The soup itself is much more than just dinner, and more of a matter of life and death.
The story is described in Genesis 25:29-34:
And Jacob cooked soup. And Esau came from the field and was tired. And Esau said to Jacob, “Please pour me some of this red stuff, because I am tired.” Therefore, his name from then on was called Edom (Red). And Jacob said, “Sell me your firstborn right, today!” And Esau said, “Here I am going to die, and what do I need the firstborn right for.” And Jacob said, “Swear to me, today!” And he swore to him. And he sold his firstborn right to Jacob. And Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil soup. And he ate, and he drank. And Esau forsook his firstborn right.
ONION PIE
From Paul Auster’s “The Red Notebook” - “In the end, we had nothing left but a bag of onions, a bottle of cooking oil, and a packaged pie crust that someone had bought before we ever moved into the house…. Given the paucity of elements we had to work with, an onion pie was the only dish that made sense.
After our concoction had been in the oven for what seemed a sufficient length of time, we took it out, set it on the table, and dug in. Against all our expectations, we both found it delicious. I think we even went so far as to say that it was the best food we had ever tasted…. Once we had chewed a little more, however, disappointment set in. Reluctantly—ever so reluctantly—we were forced to admit that the pie had not yet cooked through, that the centre was too cold to eat. There was nothing to be done but put it back in the oven. To stifle our impatience, we went out for a brief stroll…. By the time we entered the house again the kitchen was filled with smoke…. Our meal was dead.
WILD BOAR PATE
The consumption of boar goes back thousands of years. Wild boar was highly prized in the Classical world, and in the Middle Ages, it was a favoured quarry of the hunt. Virtually all parts of the boar were eaten, including its liver, stomach and even its blood, and it was considered so tasty that it was the aim of some recipes to make the meat and innards of other animals’ taste like that of boar. A boar's head was often the crowning meal of a Christmas feast and was mentioned in King Arthur’s time.
Terrines or Pâtés were known to the Romans, French and Greeks as early as the 11th century. In ancient Greece, Athenians sold Pâtés at the market; it was mostly a way to make more money by utilising and selling every part of the animals they used.
FIG CHUTNEY
Figs by D.H. Lawrence –
The proper way to eat a fig, in society,
Is to split it in four, holding it by the stump,
And open it, so that it is a glittering, rosy, moist, honied, heavy-petalled four-petalled flower.
Then you throw away the skin
Which is just like a four-sepalled calyx,
After you have taken off the blossom, with your lips.
But the vulgar way
Is just to put your mouth to the crack and take out the flesh in one bite.
Every fruit has its secret.
The fig is a very secretive fruit.
As you see it standing growing, you feel at once it is symbolic
And it seems male.
But when you come to know it better, you agree with the Romans, it is female.
MRS. DALLOWAY’S SALMON
Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf’s fourth novel, published in 1925, is set over the course of one day in post-First World War London.
As a member of London’s high society – Richard Dalloway works for the government and the Prime Minister is one of the guests at the party – Mrs Dalloway does not do any of the cooking for the party; that task is left to her household staff, overseen by Mrs Walker, who is worried, considering the guests she is feeding, knowing that the following day, after the party, the dishes will be ‘gone over.’
Mrs Walker gives an insight into what goes on behind the scenes: the effort, preparations and stress which the guests never see but which is all too real for those involved:
‘The Prime Minister was coming, Agnes said: so she had heard them say in the dining-room, she said, coming in with a tray of glasses. Did it matter, did it matter in the least, one Prime Minister more or less? It made no difference at this hour of night to Mrs Walker, among the plates, saucepans, cullenders, frying-pans, chicken in aspic, ice-cream freezers, pared crusts of bread, lemons, soup tureens, and pudding basins which, however hard they washed up in the scullery, seemed to be all on top of her, on the kitchen table, on chairs, while the fire blared and roared, the electric lights glared, and still supper had to be laid.
Next morning, they would go over the dishes – the soup, the salmon; the salmon, Mrs Walker knew, as usual, underdone, for she always got nervous about the pudding and left it to Jenny; so it happened, the salmon was always underdone.’
ASPARAGUS
Marcel Proust, Swann's Way - “Asparagus, tinged with ultramarine and rosy pink which ran from their heads, finely stippled in mauve and azure, through a series of imperceptible changes to their white feet, still stained a little by the soil of their garden-bed: a rainbow-loveliness not of this world. These celestial hues indicated the presence of exquisite creatures pleased to assume vegetable form, who, through the disguise which covered their firm and edible flesh, allowed me to discern in this radiance of earliest dawn, these hinted rainbows, these blue evening shades, that precious quality which I should recognise again when, all night long after a dinner at which I had partaken of them, they played coarse in their jesting as fairies in Shakespeare’s Dream) at transforming my humble chamber pot into a bower of aromatic perfume.”
JOHN EVELYN’S GRAND SALAD
John Evelyn (1620-1706) was a serious, scholarly gentleman, a public servant, writer, philosopher, and horticulturalist whose agile mind wandered from the study of architecture to gardens, from paintings to the pollution of London. John Evelyn's diary, or memoir, spanned the period of his adult life from 1640, when he was a student, to 1706, the year he died. He was a founding member of the Royal Society, and also a friend of Charles II. As a confirmed vegetarian, Evelyn believed that the key to health was to be found in the garden, not on the hunt. The fact that he lived to be eighty-six, might be considered proof enough.
Evelyn was so devoted to his beliefs that he wrote an entire book on the subject: Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets. Published in 1699, it suggested what kinds of plants and herbs to include in a salad garden, their cultivation, and recipes. Raw salads were more fit for masculine tastes, while he recommended that vegetables be "Boil'd, Bak'd, Pickl'd, or otherwise disguis'd, variously accommodated by skillful Cooks, to render them grateful to the more feminine Palat."
Preparatory to the Dressing therefore, let your Herby Ingredients be exquisitely cull'd, and cleans'd of all worm-eaten, slimy, snipthey be rather discretely sprinkl'd, than over-much sob'd with Spring-Water, especially Lettuce....After washing, let them remain a while in the Cullender, to drain the superfluous moisture; And lastly, swing them together gently in a clean course Napkin; and so they will be in perfect condition to receive the Intinctus following (a dressing of "the Yolks of fresh and new-laid Eggs, boil'd moderately hard, to be mingl'd and mash'd with the Mustard, Olive Oyl, and Vinegar; and cut into quarters, and eat with the Herbs).”
STRAWBERRIES
From the moment it is introduced into the plot, the handkerchief given to Desdemona by Othello in Shakespeare’s play becomes its most important symbol. As a charmed gift given to him by his mother, the handkerchief represents Othello’s mysterious and exotic heritage, one he has repudiated as a Christian and Venetian citizen. To Othello the handkerchief represents Desdemona’s chastity, and her giving it away is a sign that she has given her body away. In Act III, scene iii, Iago mentions that the handkerchief’s much-discussed embroidery is a design of strawberries. The image of strawberries on a white background recalls the blood stains on a wedding sheet that prove a bride’s virginity; the dye used to colour the strawberry pattern actually consists of the preserved blood of dead virgins, suggesting several interpretations. By positioning the handkerchief in Cassio’s lodging, Iago as good as convicts Desdemona of unfaithfulness. When Bianca is found to have the handkerchief, instructed to copy the embroidery, Desdemona seems no better than a prostitute, allowing what was a symbol of Othello’s uniqueness to be passed around and replicated. Othello convinces himself that Desdemona has lost her virtue because she has lost a symbol of that virtue.
CHOCOLATE CREAM
Alexandre Dumas is known for his plays and novels. Works such as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers (both written in 1844) gained him worldwide fame. He was also a food writer.
By 1846, Dumas had acquired enough wealth to buy himself a sumptuous country house, which he called Château de Monte-Cristo after his famous novel. He lived a lavish and extravagant life, taking the most pleasure not only in his writing, but also in entertaining. He was a great cook, and his friends, were always gathering to dine with him and listen to him talk about everything from art to politics. Dumas mixed with famous chefs, and when friends needed culinary advice, they turned to him. He was proud of his cooking skills, devoting the last years of his life to writing his cookbook and personal culinary journal, the Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine. In 1869, he retreated to Roscoff, Bretagne with his cook Marie and began writing the more than 1,600-page volume, which he completed in six months and turned in to his publisher shortly before his death in 1870. The Grand Dictionnaire de Cuisine was published posthumously in 1873. It includes hundreds of recipes as well as stories and historical culinary tidbits, and like his other works, it proved to be an exceptional piece of literature.
Under the entry ‘dinner’, he writes: “A major daily activity, which can be accomplished in worthy fashion only by intelligent people. It is not enough to eat. To dine, there must be diversified, calm conversation. It should sparkle with rubies of the wine between courses, be deliciously suave with the sweetness of dessert, and acquire true profundity with the coffee.”
ALMOND MACAROONS
In the famous Norwegian play A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen has Nora, the protagonist, eat macaroons from the very first scene: Nora has just got back home from her Christmas shopping, and stealthily eats some macaroons — with this very small yet important action, the audience immediately understands that the macaroons hide more relevance than that they actually show. Our attention is drawn to these small Christmas sweets, which appear at the beginning of the play, uncovering important aspects of Nora’s personality, and then they disappear — yet it is the flavour of those macaroons which can be tasted throughout A Doll’s House: the intense flavour of a person’s search for, and finally discovery of, their identity. Although desiccated coconut was first produced in the early 1880s, when the play was written (1879) Nora could not be eating coconut macaroons – preparing them with freshly grated coconut would have been difficult and expensive. Almonds, on the contrary, had been cultivated in Europe for centuries and are mentioned in the Old Testament, with almond flour appearing in many European recipes from the Middle Ages.
MADELEINES
"Remembrance of Things Past" - by Marcel Proust - One day in winter, as I came home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called 'petites madeleines,' which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips
a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate, a shudder ran
through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin.
And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory--this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I was conscious that it was connected with the taste of tea and cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could not, indeed, be of the same nature as theirs. Whence did it come? What did it signify? How could I seize upon and define it?
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