It may not be quite true that the next best thing to eating good food is reading about it, but undeniably food writing has its considerable pleasures. You’ve got it all there: sex and sensuality (the link between the appetites hardly needs spelling out), social history, the loving acquaintance with ingredients . . . and recipes. The Penguin Great Food series — a selection of 20 delightful, lightweight (we’re talking wrist-strain, not subject), prettily jacketed works by the finest food writers — is a feat.
Just selecting 20 authors from the 17th century to now is difficult in itself. Do you go for good prose (Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein’s companion, was a hoot as well as a lovely writer), influence (Brillat-Savarin, or Brilliant Savarin, as the homeware chain, Butlers, describes him); historic importance; famous writers who happened to write about food (Charles Lamb, who didn’t so much write about food, as about appetite and addiction) or just admirable recipe compilers?
The answer is, all of the above.
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