A Literary Culinary Journal
Do I dare to eat a peach?–T.S. Elliot, 1917
Thomas Stearns “T. S.” Eliot OM as a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American, he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25) and was naturalized as a British subject in 1927 at age 39. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.
|
|
by Simon de Swaan
At meat cleanse not thy teeth nor pick
With knife or straw or wand or stick.
The Book of Courtesy, c 1450
Published in 1868 under the title The Babee’s Book along with the second volume Queen Elizabeth’s Academy, published a year later, give the best example of medieval life and manners in England.
|
|
There are people who eat the earth and eat all the people on it like in the Bible with the locusts. And other people who stand around and watch them eat it.–Lillian Hellman, 1939
Lillian Florence “Lily” Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984) was an American playwright, linked throughout her life with many left-wing causes. She was romantically involved for 30 years with mystery and crime writer Dashiell Hammett (and was the inspiration for his character Nora Charles), and was also a long-time friend and literary executor of author Dorothy Parker.
|
|
American table manners are, if anything, a more advanced form of civilized behavior than the Europeans, because they are more complicated and further removed from the practical result, always a sign of refinement.–Miss Manners, 1982
Judith Martin, better known by the pen name Miss Manners, is an American journalist, author, and etiquette authority. Martin’s uncle was the economist and labor historian Selig Perlman. Click here to read her Washington Post column.
|
|
by Jonell Galloway
Bonbons, which we call in English sweets or candy, are a recent enough arrival on the European food scene. The Crusaders brought back sugar cane from the Orient, arriving first in Sicily, where Jewish scientists in Sicily carried out experiments on it in around 1230. Until then, Europeans made their sweets using fruit juice and honey, often flavored with cinnamon.
Candy instantly became the rage and techniques were refined. During the Renaissance, men of means carried bonbonnières, or candy holders, in their pockets, often decorated with precious stones, and offered ladies candy from them.
Wikipedia notes that the “Middle English word “candy” began to be used in the late 13th century, coming into English from the Old French çucre candi, derived in turn from Persian Qand (=قند) and Qandi (=قندی), ‘cane sugar’.”
|
|
Let the revolting distinction of rich and poor disappear once and for all, the distinction of great and small, masters and valets, of governors and governed. Since all have the same needs and the same faculties, let there be one education for all, one food for all.–François-Noël Babeuf, 1796
François-Noël Babeuf, known as Gracchus Babeuf (in tribute to the Roman tribunes of the people and reformers, the Gracchi brothers, and used alongside his self-designation “Tribune”), was a French political agitator and journalist of the revolutionary period.
|
|
by Simón de Swaan
Thought depends absolutely on the stomach, but in spite of that, those who have the best stomachs are not the best thinkers.–Voltaire, 1770
François-Marie Arouet, better known by the pen name Voltaire, was a writer, historian and philosopher of the French Enlightenment, famous for his wit and for advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state.
|
|
by Simón de Swaan
I will not eat oysters. They’re alive when you eat them. I want my food dead – not sick, not wounded – dead.–Woody Allen, 1967
Woody Allen an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen’s films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema.
|
|
X. Men who stuff themselves and grow tipsy know neither how to eat nor how to drink.–Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin was a French lawyer and politician, and gained fame as an epicure and gastronome. His famous work, Physiologie du goût (Physiology of Taste), was published in December 1825. The full title is Physiologie du Goût, ou Méditations de Gastronomie Transcendante; ouvrage théorique, historique et à l’ordre du jour, dédié aux Gastronomes parisiens, par un Professeur, membre de plusieurs sociétés littéraires et savantes. The book has never been out of print since it first appeared, two months before Brillat-Savarin’s death. Its most notable English translation was done by food writer and critic M.F.K. Fisher, who remarked, “I hold myself blessed among translators.” Her translation was first published in 1949.
|
|
Sadder than destitution, sadder than a beggar is the man who eats alone in public. Nothing more contradicts the laws of man or beast, for animals always do each other the honor of sharing or disputing each other’s food.–Jean Baudrillard, 1986
French theorist Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) was one of the foremost intellectual figures in modern history. His work combines philosophy, social theory, and an idiosyncratic cultural metaphysics that reflects on key events of phenomena of the period.
|
|
Meet Jonell Galloway, a freelance writer and editor specialized in French cuisine. 
