It is remarkable
how much of an impact the mention of food has on me when I’m reading. One of my
earliest recollections of this comes from the childhood memory of reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.
Even as I judged the traitorous Edmund for selling out his family, and indeed
all of Narnia, to the horrible White Witch simply for Turkish Delight, I was mindful
of the magic it had over him. My sympathetic sweet tooth kicked in as I read
about how he gobbled down a few pounds of the enchanted candy – each piece “sweet
and light to the very center” – and washed it down with a sweet, foamy and
creamy beverage he’d never tasted before that “warmed him right down to his
toes.”
Yet if descriptions
of delightful food in books have the power to inspire us to hunger then so,
too, does the absence of food. I was lightheaded by literature-inspired hunger as
I read Elie Wiesel’s Night, nearly overwhelmed
by the notion of people wasting away from lack of nourishment. Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes described one starving
boy’s yearning for a simple potato so dearly that I was never again able to
take for granted what for me had been a somewhat ordinary staple food. His
fixation on “floury white potatoes” was so constant that the three words formed
a distinct phrase that echoes in my head to this day.
Even when food
isn’t pivotal to the plot, it can greatly enhance a reading experience. Last
year I read several books outside of my usual genre, for a readers’ advisory
class. Gail Carriger’s Soulless was
an interesting mix of vampires, werewolves and steampunk that invoked a
fascination for treacle tart so conspicuous that one of my classmates was moved
to bake treacle tarts for us to sample. In Love
Letters by Beverly Lewis, the simple, hardworking Amish lifestyle takes
center stage – and the amount of time spent describing cooking, baking and
canning made me famished! If I’m honest the book also caused me to wonder if
there isn’t something to the idea of a simpler life spent attending well to
daily tasks like cooking, instead of our modern focus on convenience and
reliance on prepared foods, but I digress. In lieu of packing up and moving to
Amish country, I now devote more time to cooking homemade meals, and hope to
start baking the occasional pie.
As I read Gina
Wohlsdorf’s novel Security I was fascinated
by a passage in which a chef reflects on the profile cherries, lamenting that
it has “a volatility that the common mouth does not comprehend.” He goes on to note that cinnamon will make
the cherries in his recipe too sweet while liquor will make them overly spicy.
In a fit of pique, the chef exclaims, “I get desperate, monsieur – I try
vinegar!”
This rekindled a
curiosity I’d had about the strange alchemy of flavor that certain ingredients produce
when combined. I was inspired to hunt for books on this topic, and ended up with
a counter full of cookbooks from the library selected mainly on the basis of
their titles. Of these, many didn’t fully address my question about the whys
and wherefores of flavor combinations, they simply offered up recipes to try.
Luckily, two of the
books had just what I was after. The
Flavor Bible (by Karen Page) was a standout. The entries in this encyclopedia-style
compendium of foods state brief characteristics for each item, followed by a
ranked list of ingredients that pair well with it. I will look forward to
testing the suggestions in this kitchen reference book.
Similar in concept
if not format was Niki Segnit’s The
Flavor Thesaurus, which contains a paragraph entry for each ingredient
pairing, together with suggested recipes and variations of key ingredients.
Many entries contain historical information. As an inveterate browser of
cookbooks simply for the joy of it, I’ll look forward to reading this one in
depth.
Since I am a member
of the group of people who enjoys paging through cookbooks as entertainment,
not necessarily in preparation to make a meal, I was led to some lighter fare
such as The Geeky Chef Cookbook: Unofficial Recipes from Doctor Who, Game of
Thrones, Harry Potter, and more. This is a fun little romp through creative
(if not authentic) recipes such as one for the blue milk from Star Wars
(spoiler alert: it’s not just made with milk and dye) or the lembas the
travelers ate to keep hunger at bay on their journey in The Fellowship of the Ring. Each recipe is introduced by a
paragraph full of pop culture references, there’s something for everyone.
Another title that
caught my eye even though it was outside the scope of my search for information
on flavor was What Einstein Told His
Cook, an interesting compendium of over 100 science-based explanations and debunked
myths for such wonderments as why we salt water before boiling pasta, or why
recipes call for unsalted butter but then ask you to add salt. Although there
is some practical information herein, this book is more for fun.
I realize that in
order to satisfy my latest curiosity about flavor combinations, I will have to
start testing them out. Yet I also admit that from the sublime to the silly,
the cookbooks on my counter don’t just display a desire to learn how to cook. They
suggest a love of books that showcase sustenance. You might say I have a taste
for reading about food.
