A Literary Culinary Journal
by Simón de Swaan
In my experience, clever food is not appreciated at Christmas. It makes the little ones cry and the old ones nervous.–Jane Grigson
Jane Grigson was a notable English cookery writer who wrote over 20 cookbooks and whose growing interest in food and cooking led to the writing of her first book, Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery (1967), which was accorded the unusual honour for an English food writer of being translated into French.
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by Simón de Swaan
Little Tommy Tucker
Sings for his supper;
What shall we give him?
White bread and butter.
Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book, c 1744
Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book is the earliest extant printed collection of English language nursery rhymes, published in London in 1744. It was a sequel to the lost Tommy Thumb’s Song Book and contains the oldest version of many well-known and popular rhymes, as well as several that have been largely forgotten.
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by Simón de Swaan
The proof of the pudding is in the eating.–Miguel de Cervantes, 1615
Don Quixote was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, here, considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written.
Click to read more about him.
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by Simón de Swaan
A warmed-up dinner was never worth anything.–Nicolas Boileau, 1667
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux was a French poet and critic. He was born in the rue de Jérusalem, in Paris, France. He was brought up in the law, but devoted to letters, associating himself with La Fontaine, Racine, and Molière. He is the author of Satires and Epistles, L’Art poétique and Le Lutrin, in which he attacked and employed his wit against what he perceived to be the bad taste of his time.
Boileau did much to reform the prevailing form of French poetry, as Blaise Pascal did to reform the prose, and was for a long time the law-giver of Parnassus. He was greatly influenced by Horace.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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XVIII . He who plays host without giving his personal care to the repast is unworthy of having friends to invite to it.—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.
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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.
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Meet Jonell Galloway, a freelance writer and editor specialized in French cuisine. 
