Food in Literature: Making it Real (Part I)

The search begins because of our plan to have a "literary" theme to our neighborhood gourmet club when it is our turn to host. While my only immediate connection to this goes back many years to my reading the Nero Wolfe novels by Rex Stout, our idea would not be focused on just one author, so my Internet wandering begins by wondering how to find more recipes from novels.

My first effort was for "literary recipes". This led me to a series of books which does NOT interest me: cookbooks "inspired" by literature. Thus, one can find Literary Feasts: Recipes from the Classics of Literature by Barbara Scrafford, which "explores the significance of food in literature" by putting together recipes that will replicate a famous meal from a book, The Book Lover's Cookbook: Recipes Inspired by Celebrated Works of Literature, and the Passages That Feature Themby Shaunda Kennedy Wenger and Janet Jensen (Author), Literary Feasts: Inspired Eating from Classic Fictionby Sean Brand, and The Book Club Cookbookby Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp, which "guides readers in selecting and preparing culinary masterpieces that tie in just right with the literary masterpieces their club is reading".

Before changing searches, however, I did make one interesting connection to an Abe Books blog posting on "Louisa May Alcott’s Apple Slump", which certainly seems to provide an example of what I was looking for. While it is just one lone recipe from one lone author, its inspiration was a new blog "Paper and Salt." But I got disappointed since that blog was a step back to my first search "recreating the favorite recipes of famous authors." Oh well.

Back to a new search. After a detour for Nero Wolfe recipes, which led me to the classic The Nero Wolfe Cookbookwhich I will consider acquring, I went for  "novels with recipes"

and that led me to an Epi-Log blog posting on "The Best Novels with Recipes (Or Novels with the Best Recipes)". At least someone is on the same wavelength, but no systematic effort here, but a source for a number of comments that clearly could be food for thought (ha-ha). But the next hit was  intellectual pay dirt, even if no the Holy Grail:

In the April 9, 2007, issue of The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik wrote about "Cooked Books: Real Food from Fictional Recipes". Here, following a debate that had been going on in TLS (guess that may need to be my next search!) he writes:

There are four kinds of food in books: food that is served by an author to characters who are not expected to taste it; food that is served by an author to characters in order to show who they are; food that an author cooks for characters in order to eat it with them; and, last (and most recent), food that an author cooks for characters but actually serves to the reader.

So, now I know--I have been finding some of the first two or three types, but what I want is type four. As Gopnik spells that one out in further detail: "And then there are writers, ever more numerous, who present on the page not just the result but the whole process—not just what people eat but how they make it, exactly how much garlic is chopped, and how, and when it is placed in the pan." And, he notes, that "Sometimes entire recipes are included in the text, a practice that links Kurt Vonnegut’s “Deadeye Dick” to Nora Ephron’s “Heartburn.” That, my friends, will be the Holy Grail--a collection of "entire recipes" served up "in the text" itself. Gopnik gives a taste of the path--as he tells us of his attempts "to mimic some cooking as it is done in a number of relatively recent novels"--but really just a taste, just enough to continue on ones quest.

But, that will be for another day ... this posting is already too much. So let us call this an appetizer. [I subsequently have written an addendum but have yet to develop a promised Part II!]