The Art of Eating: 50th Anniversary Edition

It's a bit of a cheat to count this as a book read since I've already counted each of the five books that make it up as a separate book read, but this is the book I put on my Classics Club list as well as my 2021 Nonfiction Challenge list and this is the book that, technically, I have now finished.

To simply things, I will cut and past the reviews I previously posted about the five books that compose The Art of Eating below.

SERVE IT FORTH

Brilliant essays, loosely written on the theme of food.

“WHEN shall we live, if not now?” asked Seneca before a table laid for his pleasure and his friends'. It is a question whose answer is almost too easily precluded. When indeed? We are alive, and now. When else live, and how more pleasantly than supping with sweet comrades?

M.F.K. Fisher looks at food in history, sharing some little-known stories of the foods people found and put together to eat, stories of the way a means of sustenance turned into art.

Sometimes there were big meals.

“Fifty swans, a hundred and ten geese, fifty capons ‘of hie grece' and eight dozen other capons, sixty dozen hens, five herons, six kids and seven dozen rabbits (strange place here for such lively fourlegged wingless little beasts!), five dozen pullets for jelly and some eleven dozen to roast, a hundred dozen peacocks, twenty dozen cranes and curlews, and ‘wilde fowle ynogh.'”

Sometimes it was the presentation.

Flowers were often used thus by the Middle English, sometimes most fortunately. What could be more ludicrously lovely than a tiny crackled piglet all garlanded with lilies and wild daffodils? Or a baked swan in its feathers, with roses on its proud reptilian head?

The stunning changes that resulted from Catherine de Medici's decision to bring her chefs with her from Italy to France. A sad tale of a once-magnificent waiter's last night at the helm. The story of “a moment of complete gastronomic satisfaction.”

If you call yourself a food reader, this and M.F.K. Fisher's other collections of essays are must-reads. And even if you are not, even if you are simply a lover of great writing, this and Fisher's other works will delight you.

CONSIDER THE OYSTER

One of the signs that M.F.K. Fisher is an amazing writer: Fisher can write an entire book about oysters and it's cover-to-cover fascinating.

I have eaten oysters. They were delicious. But I would be fine if I never ate them again.

Still, I read this book and I couldn't stop reading. If you are an oyster-lover, it's definitely a book for you. And even if you are not, you may want to read it anyway.

HOW TO COOK A WOLF

How to Cook a Wolf is a collection of essays focusing on frugality during difficult times. It was first published during World War II.

I'd love to hear what a young person would say about some of Fisher's suggestions. I imagine a young person would find them to be very extreme.

THE GASTRONOMICAL ME

M.F.K. Fisher tells the story of her life through the foods she experienced. Fisher begins with her forays into college life and her first marriage, and then tells of her gradual development as a food writer that was highly influenced by her move to France.

Fisher almost skips over key details in her life including her divorce and the decline and eventual suicide of her second husband, so I had to do a bit of research to fill in the gaps.

No matter what Fisher is writing about—whether it's her life or stories about people she meets or places she lives or the food she eats—her writing is mesmerizing.

AN ALPHABET FOR GOURMETS

As a person who reads 200+ children's picture books a year, I can firmly vow to you that this is an alphabet book like no other. Yes, it's organized alphabetically, with one essay for each letter of the alphabet, but, trust me on this, even if you read through the chapter titles, you will have no idea where Ms. Fisher is going to take you.

X is for Xanthippe, for example, uses Xanthippe, the wife of Socrates, and her (presumed) behavior at meals (she is believed to be the epitome of a harpy) to share with her readers what not to do when dining together with others.

And Z is for Zakuski, the last chapter, is about hors d'oeuvres, which a logical thinker might wish to find in the A chapter. But Fisher has her reasons. And they are good ones.

N is for Nautical? M is for Monastic? And how do these fit into a book about food? Perhaps these are unexpected, but that is part of the delight of this book.

Even P is for Peas is not a straightforward treatise on the green vegetable, and that, too, is Fisher's charm.