What is your favorite meal in literature?
Madeleines and tea from Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust. All photos from 10 Great Meals in Literature at the Telegraph.
Chowder has its own chapter in Moby Dick by Herman Melville
Holden had a Swiss cheese sandwich and a malted milk at a drugstore in The Catcher in the Rye.
Inevitably someone mentions that eating scene in Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, but the novel doesn’t go into detail about what they ate. Probably because they were really consuming each other.
In Babette’s Feast by Isak Dinesen, Babette the French maid prepares a spectacular dinner. The Dwarves dine rowdily at the house of their unwilling host Bilbo in The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog is full of meals. In Light Years, James Salter declares that “Life is meals.” Though as prepared by Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, they require more death than usual. In the Jeeves books by P.G. Wodehouse, Bertie Wooster is always being lured to his Aunt Dahlia’s house by the promise of fabulous meals prepared by her French cook Anatole.
Then there are the terrible meals, such as that eventful dinner in Atonement by Ian McEwan.
Despite the late addition of chopped fresh mint to a blend of melted chocolate, egg yolk, coconut milk, rum, gin, crushed banana and icing sugar, the cocktail was not particularly refreshing. Appetites already cloyed by the night’s heat were further diminished. Nearly all the adults entering the airless dining room were nauseated by the prospect of a roast dinner, or even roast meat with salad, and would have been content with a glass of cool water. But water was available only to the children, while the rest were to revive themselves with a dessert wine at room temperature.
And Patrick’s breakfast in Bad News, the second book in the Patrick Melrose series by Edward St. Aubyn.
The smell of decaying food had filled the room surprisingly quickly. Patrick’s breakfast was devastated without being eaten. A dent in the grey paste of the porridge contained a half-eaten stewed pear; rashers of bacon hung on the edge of a plate smeared with egg yolk, and in the flooded saucer two cigarette butts lay sodden with coffee. A triangle of abandoned toast bore the semicircular imprint of his teeth, and spilled sugar glistened everywhere on the tablecloth. Only the orange juice and the tea were completely finished.
Of course there was a meal to, uh, celebrate the wedding of Edmure Tully and Roslin Frey in A Storm of Swords from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, but we don’t remember what food was served. Just everything else.
What is your favorite meal in literature? Post the passage in Comments. There’s the tinola in Noli me tangere…
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
November 4th, 2013 at 11:22
From “The Powerbook” by Jeanette Winterson, there is a recipe for “Salsa di Pomodori”. Although I believed the entry to be a metaphor for love making, I executed the recipe to certain literal culinary levels. With a little improvisation, of course. Overall result: masarap and must-try. Here is the entry:
“Take a dozen plum tomatoes and slice them lengthways as though they were your enemy.
Fasten them into a lidded pot and heat for ten minutes.
Chop an onion without tears.
Dice a carrot without regret.
Shard a celery as though its flutes and grooves were indentations of your past.
Add to the tomatoes and cook unlidded for as a long it takes them to yield.
Throw in salt, pepper and a twist of sugar.
Pound the lot through a sieve or a Mouli or blender.
Remember – they are the vegetables, you are the cook.
Return to a soft flame and lubricate with olive oil. Add a spoonful at a time, stirring like an old witch, until you achieve the right balance of slippery firmness.
Serve on top of fresh spaghetti. Cover with rough new Parmesan and cut basil. Raw emotion can be added now.
Serve. Eat. Reflect.”
.
November 4th, 2013 at 14:39
Lembas bread as trail food for the Fellowship. It reminded me of when we were climbing Mt. Maculot and all I had for trail food was skyflakes. I didn’t like skyflakes at all as it reminded me of summers in Quezon province where merienda was skyflakes and kapeng barako, no candies, no sweets, no choice.
Now that skyflakes eaten in the middle of climbing Mt. Maculot was the best skyflakes I have ever had in my whole life.
Now, whenever I climb mountains, I bring crackers and I pretend they’re lembas bread. Sayang lang at walang Legolas or Aragorn, puro hobbits lang.
November 4th, 2013 at 19:17
Tinola, sa simula ng Noli Me Tangere. Natatandaan kong nadismaya si Damaso dahil naunang kuhanin ni Ibarra ang paboritong parte ng manok ng una.
November 4th, 2013 at 21:07
Ano nga po yung website where they re-create the dishes from ASOIAF?
I don’t really know how to cook but I remember spending hours drooling over the entries there…hehe
November 5th, 2013 at 00:02
Since Your Grace mentions tinola, I say…Rorschach eats a can of pork and beans in The Watchmen, and his prison meal before his one-man fight against the very prisoners he puts in prison, Your Grace.
November 5th, 2013 at 11:55
Most memorable was the one in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, when the Pevensies had a meal with Mr. and Mrs. Beaver: http://bracademy.wikispaces.com/file/view/The+Lion,+The+Witch+and+The+Wardrobe+by+C.S.+Lewis.pdf (page 42).
6 years old ako nung nabasa ko ang aklat na ito. Hinding-hindi ko makalimutan ang chapter na ‘yan. Hinahanap-hanap ko pa rin yung tamang amoy ng pritong isda na tulad niyan.
November 5th, 2013 at 13:38
in sorry fugu by t coraghessan boyle– the big boiled potato (with skin on it) + canned peas served to the ‘substitute’ taster of the fierce food critic. anggaling ng istorya na iyon.
November 5th, 2013 at 20:53
Ang Chabela Wedding Cake sa Like Water for Chocolate ni Laura Esquivel. Isang buong kabanata ito ng pagbe-bake at ng kababalaghang nangyari pagkatapos. Hehe!
November 5th, 2013 at 21:11
From “The Things You Know,” a short story that appears in Julian Barnes’ collection, The Lemon Table:
“Coffee, ladies?”
They both looked up at the waiter but he was already advancing the flask towards Merrill’s cup. When he’d finished pouring, he moved his eyes, not to Janice, but to Janice’s cup. She covered it with her hand. Even after all these years, she didn’t understand why Americans wanted coffee immediately the waiter arrived. They drank hot coffee, then cold orange juice, then more coffee. It didn’t make sense at all.
“No coffee?” the waiter asked, as if her gesture could have been ambiguous. He wore a green linen apron and his hair was so gelled that you could see every comb-mark.
“I’ll have tea. Later.”
“English Breakfast, Orange Pekoe, Earl Grey?”
“English Breakfast. But later.”
November 6th, 2013 at 01:29
An apple is hardly a meal, but I remember how Tom Sawyer was enjoying that fruit of his trickery. He got some kid to whitewash a fence for him, and that same kid gave Tom an apple, too. As a bribe.
November 7th, 2013 at 07:39
amypond: How could I have forgotten? I read the book when I was in college, and that memorable meal with Mr and Mrs Beaver reminded me of home and of home-cooked meals, which no restaurant in the world can ever compare to.
November 15th, 2013 at 21:24
Speaking of food in literature, here are some strange cookbooks. Some of them are not strange from a Filipino point of view.
http://mentalfloss.com/article/53556/15-strange-and-awesome-cookbooks