Fictitious Dishes Read online

  * * *

  • L’Engle’s manuscript was rejected by twenty-six publishers before being bought in 1962 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

  • The book won the Newbery Medal in 1963 and has been translated into more than fifteen languages.

  • Liverwurst—“liver sausage”—is eaten commonly across Europe, and is served differently depending on the region. In Germany’s Rhineland, it’s fried and eaten with onion, apples, and potatoes; in Poland, it is often made of calf’s liver and eaten on rye bread with spicy horseradish mustard; in Hungary, it is rolled into pancakes with cheese, and beef liverwurst on sliced bread with murături (“pickles”) is a traditional Christmas Eve dinner.

  • In 1872, when dairyman William Lawrence was trying to make Neufchâtel, he accidently developed a method for producing what he called “cream cheese,” which in 1880 began to be marketed as Philadelphia brand cream cheese.

  ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE

  GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ, 1967

  ON RAINY AFTERNOONS, embroidering with a group of friends on the begonia porch, she would lose the thread of the conversation and a tear of nostalgia would salt her palate when she saw the strips of damp earth and the piles of mud that the earthworms had pushed up in the garden. Those secret tastes, defeated in the past by oranges and rhubarb, broke out into an irrepressible urge when she began to weep. She went back to eating earth. The first time she did it almost out of curiosity, sure that the bad taste would be the best cure for the temptation. And, in fact, she could not bear the earth in her mouth. But she persevered, overcome by the growing anxiety, and little by little she was getting back her ancestral appetite, the taste of primary minerals, the unbridled satisfaction of what was the original food.

  * * *

  • The passage quoted here describes the strange behavior of Rebeca—an orphan adopted by the Buendía family—who has a curious habit of eating dirt and whitewash.

  • With the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude, García Márquez earned international acclaim. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.

  • The first written record of geophagy—the practice of eating soil—comes from Hippocrates and dates back two thousand years. Cornell University research has revealed that eating dirt can protect the stomach against certain toxins, parasites, and pathogens.

  THE ROAD

  CORMAC McCARTHY, 2006

  HE UNROLLED THE MATTRESS PADS on the bunks for them to sit on and he opened the carton of pears and took out a can and set it on the table and clamped the lid with the can opener and began to turn the wheel. He looked at the boy. The boy was sitting quietly on the bunk, still wrapped in the blanket, watching. The man thought he had probably not fully committed himself to any of this. You could wake in the dark wet woods at any time. These will be the best pears you ever tasted, he said. The best. Just you wait.

  They sat side by side and ate the can of pears. Then they ate a can of peaches. They licked the spoons and tipped the bowls and drank the rich sweet syrup.

  * * *

  • The Road was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction in 2006 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2007.

  • While in an abandoned town, the man and the boy discover a bunker full of untouched food, clothes, tools, toiletries, and other useful items. The ordinary canned and preserved food they eat—which saves them from starvation—is, for them, a luxurious feast.

  • Canned foods date back to the Napoleonic Wars (1803–15), when the French government offered a reward of 12,000 francs to anyone who could devise an inexpensive way of preserving food. A confectioner named Nicolas Appert—“the father of canning”—was the first to suggest storing food in airtight containers.

  MADAME BOVARY

  GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, 1856

  A CONFECTIONER OF YVETOT had been entrusted with the tarts and sweets. As he had only just set up on the place, he had taken a lot of trouble, and at dessert he himself brought in a set dish that evoked loud cries of wonderment. To begin with, at its base there was a square of blue cardboard, representing a temple with porticoes, colonnades, and stucco statuettes all round, and in the niches constellations of gilt paper stars; then on the second stage was a dungeon of Savoy cake, surrounded by many fortifications in candied angelica, almonds, raisins, and quarters of oranges; and finally, on the upper platform a green field with rocks set in lakes of jam, nutshell boats, and a small Cupid balancing himself in a chocolate swing whose two uprights ended in real roses for balls at the top.

  * * *

  • Emma Bovary, disgusted by her husband’s slow eating habits, is often forced to sit at the table long after she finishes and nibble restlessly on hazelnuts or draw with the point of her knife on the oilcloth.

  • The scenes of extramarital romance were very shocking for the time. Flaubert and La Revue de Paris, the magazine that published the novel in serial form in the fall of 1856, were accused of obscenity by public prosecutors and were put on trial in 1857. After Flaubert’s acquittal, the book became a bestseller.

  • Dating back to the age of Louis XIV or earlier, Savoy cake is an old-fashioned light, spongy cake often baked or cut in a fancy and unusual shape.

  BLUEBERRIES FOR SAL

  ROBERT McCLOSKEY, 1948

  LITTLE SAL PICKED THREE BERRIES and dropped them in her little tin pail . . . kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk!

  She picked three more berries and ate them. Then she picked more berries and dropped one in the pail—kuplunk! And the rest she ate. Then Little Sal ate all four blueberries out of her pail.

  * * *

  • Blueberries for Sal was awarded the Caldecott Honor Medal in 1949.

  • McCloskey based his illustrations of Little Sal and her mother on his wife, Peggy, and his daughter, Sally.

  • Wild blueberries are the official state fruit of Maine. The state harvested nearly 100 million pounds of them in 2012, almost reaching the record of 110 million pounds harvested in 2000.

  • Blueberries have always grown abundantly in North America; Native Americans once called them “star berries”—thanks to the five-pointed shape of its blossom—and believed that the “Great Spirit” created the berries to feed hungry children during times of famine.

  TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

  HARPER LEE, 1960

  “WE’RE NOT THROUGH YET. There’ll be an appeal, you can count on that. Gracious alive, Cal, what’s all this?” [Atticus] was staring at his breakfast plate.

  Calpurnia said, “Tom Robinson’s daddy sent you along this chicken this morning. I fixed it.”

  “You tell him I’m proud to get it—bet they don’t have chicken for breakfast at the White House. What are these?”

  “Rolls,” said Calpurnia. “Estelle down at the hotel sent ’em.”

  Atticus looked up at her, puzzled, and she said, “You better step out here and see what’s in the kitchen, Mr. Finch.”

  We followed him. The kitchen table was loaded with enough food to bury the family: hunks of salt pork, tomatoes, beans, even scuppernongs. Atticus grinned when he found a jar of pickled pigs’ knuckles. “Reckon Aunty’ll let me eat these in the diningroom?”

  * * *

  • In spite of the jury’s unjustly finding Tom Robinson guilty, Tom’s father gives Atticus a chicken the next day to thank him for defending him in court.

  • Food is prevalent in the novel, with many mentions of tempting Southern treats, including ambrosia, turnip greens, Lane cake, crackling bread, peach pickles, dewberry tarts, fried pork chops, and Nehi cola.

  • To Kill a Mockingbird won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1961. Despite her success, Lee never wrote another novel.

  • The character of Dill is based on Lee’s close childhood friend Truman Capote.

  “CHICKEN SOUP WITH RICE”

  MAURICE SENDAK, 1962

  IN JUNE IN JULY IN AUGUST

  I saw a charming group I’ll take a peep It will be so hot

  of roses all begin Int
o the cool and I will become a

  to droop fishy deep cooking pot

  I pepped them up Where chicken soup Cooking soup of course—

  with chicken soup! is selling cheap why not?

  Sprinkle once, Selling once, Cooking once,

  sprinkle twice selling twice cooking twice

  Sprinkle chicken soup Selling chicken soup Cooking chicken soup

  with rice with rice with rice

  * * *

  • Chicken soup has long been a folk remedy for the common cold, but science has confirmed what mothers have always known: a bowl of hot chicken soup has anti-inflammatory properties.

  • Chicken soup is an international favorite—in China it usually includes ginger, scallions, black pepper, sesame oil, and soy sauce; Greek avgolemono is made with beaten eggs and lemon; in Colombia, ajiaco is prepared with potatoes, sweet corn, avocado, capers, and guascas, an herb; and in Germany, spätzle is often added to chicken broth.

  • Frank Sinatra loved chicken soup and always included among his food requests that a can of Campbell’s Chicken Soup with Rice be provided in his dressing room.

  FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS

  HUNTER S. THOMPSON, 1971

  “YOU GODDAMN HONKIES ARE ALL THE SAME.” By this time he’d opened a new bottle of tequila and was quaffing it down. Then he grabbed a grapefruit and sliced it in half with a Gerber Mini-Magnum—a stainless-steel hunting knife with a blade like a fresh-honed straight razor.

  “Where’d you get that knife?” I asked.

  “Room service sent it up,” he said. “I wanted something to cut the limes.”

  “What limes?”

  “They didn’t have any,” he said. “They don’t grow out here in the desert.” He sliced the grapefruit into quarters . . . then into eighths . . . then sixteenths . . . then he began slashing aimlessly at the residue.

  * * *

  • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was first printed in two parts in Rolling Stone magazine. Enthusiastically received, the story introduced the then-unorthodox practice of “gonzo journalism”—a style that could be highly subjective and often included the writer as part of the article.

  • The book is so effectively surrealistic that when Thompson reread it, he claimed that he had no idea what was real and what he had invented.

  • Hunter S. Thompson took breakfast very seriously and ate a massive one regardless of what time zone he was in or if he had slept the night before. He always began the meal with Bloody Marys followed by margaritas.

  HEIDI

  JOHANNA SPYRI, 1880

  THE KETTLE SOON BEGAN TO BOIL, and meanwhile the old man held a large piece of cheese on a long iron fork over the fire, turning it round and round till it was toasted a nice golden yellow color on each side. Heidi watched all that was going on with eager curiosity.

  * * *

  • Heidi was originally published in two volumes, the first entitled Heidi’s Years of Learning and Travel and the second, Heidi Makes Use of What She Has Learned.

  • The 1937 movie—starring Shirley Temple in the title role—is perhaps the most beloved of the more than twenty film and television adaptations of Heidi.

  • From the 1930s to 1999, the Swiss Cheese Union (Schweizerische Käseunion) promoted fondue and raclette—both forms of melted cheese served with bread—as the national dishes of Switzerland.

  MIDDLESEX

  JEFFREY EUGENIDES, 2002

  MY GRANDFATHER’S SHORT EMPLOY AT THE FORD MOTOR COMPANY marked the only time any Stephanides has ever worked in the automotive industry. Instead of cars, we could become manufacturers of hamburger platters and Greek salads, industrialists of spanakopita and grilled cheese sandwiches, technocrats of rice pudding and banana cream pie. Our assembly line was the grill; our heavy machinery, the soda fountain.

  * * *

  • Middlesex was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2003.

  • Greek-owned diners, which have been popular in the United States since an immigration wave in the 1950s, often offer extensive menus that list a wide range of American and Greek dishes, from pancakes to gyro sandwiches, from disco fries to filet of sole, and from apple pie to spinach pie (spanakopita).

  • Greek diners and coffee shops are renowned for serving coffee to go in now-iconic blue-and-white paper coffee cups, the design of which features two Greek vases and three steaming cups of coffee below the words WE ARE HAPPY TO SERVE YOU.

  • In Greece, the average per capita feta cheese consumption per year is more than twenty-five pounds—the highest in the world.

  EAST OF EDEN

  JOHN STEINBECK, 1952

  BECAUSE THE DAY HAD BEEN HOT, Lee set a table outside under an oak tree, and as the sun neared the western mountains he padded back and forth from the kitchen, carrying the cold meats, pickles, potato salad, coconut cake, and peach pie which were supper. In the center of the table he placed a gigantic stoneware pitcher full of milk.

  * * *

  • The summer meal described in the passage quoted here is eaten after newlyweds Adam and Cathy Trask first settle in California; he is ecstatically happy there, but she—pregnant with twin boys, Caleb and Aron—is not.

  • A native of California’s Salinas Valley himself, Steinbeck said that East of Eden was “the story of my country and the story of me.” He considered My Valley as an alternative title for the novel.

  • According to Steinbeck’s records, he used approximately three hundred pencils and thirty-six reams of paper during the year he spent writing East of Eden.

  • The word “pickle” comes from the Dutch word pekel (“brine”). According to the Department of Agriculture, the average American eats more than eight pounds of pickles a year.

  THE METAMORPHOSIS

  FRANZ KAFKA, 1915

  IN ORDER TO TEST HIS TASTE, she brought him a whole selection of things, all spread out on an old newspaper. There were old, half-rotten vegetables; bones from the evening meal, covered in white sauce that had gone hard; a few raisins and almonds; some cheese that Gregor had declared inedible two days before; a dry roll and some bread spread with butter and salt. . . . Then, out of consideration for Gregor’s feelings, as she knew that he would not eat in front of her, she hurried out again and even turned the key in the lock so that Gregor would know he could make things as comfortable for himself as he liked. Gregor’s little legs whirred, at last he could eat. . . . Quickly one after another, his eyes watering with pleasure, he consumed the cheese, the vegetables and the sauce; the fresh foods, on the other hand, he didn’t like at all, and even dragged the things he did want to eat a little way away from them because he couldn’t stand the smell.

  * * *

  • Kafka wrote The Metamorphosis in three weeks.

  • In the book’s original German, Gregor is transformed into an ungeheures Ungeziefer, which literally means “monstrous unclean animal not suitable for sacrifice.” The English word “vermin” comes closest in meaning to the German word Ungeziefer, but it is often translated as “bug,” “insect,” “beetle,” or “cockroach.”

  • After discovering her brother as a “vermin” for the first time, Grete Samsa goes out to get him some food and returns with a feast fit only for a fly.

  “BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER”

  ERNEST HEMINGWAY, 1925

  NICK WAS HUNGRY. He did not believe he had ever been hungrier. He opened and emptied a can of pork and beans and a can of spaghetti into a frying pan. . . .

  The beans and spaghetti warmed. Nick stirred them and mixed them together. They began to bubble, making little bubbles that rose with difficulty to the surface. There was a good smell. Nick got out a bottle of tomato catchup and cut four slices of bread. The little bubbles were coming faster now. Nick sat down beside the fire and lifted the frying pan off. He poured about half the contents out into the tin plate. It spread slowly on the plate. Nick knew it was too hot. He poured on some tomato catchup. He knew the beans and spaghetti were still too hot. He looked at
the fire, then at the tent, he was not going to spoil it all by burning his tongue. . . . He was very hungry. Across the river in the swamp, in the almost dark, he saw a mist rising. He looked at the tent once more. All right. He took a full spoonful from the plate.

  * * *

  • “Wholesome as they are good!” was the 1920s slogan for Campbell’s Beans, which cost twelve cents a can at the time Hemingway wrote “Big Two-Hearted River.”

  • As a child, Hemingway spent much time hunting and fishing near his family’s lake house in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where he killed and ate trout, squirrels, and other woodland creatures.

  • Hemingway loved to drink. His favorite cocktail was a dry martini, which he liked so ice cold that he had special methods for chilling it: he froze the martini glasses and the Spanish cocktail onions, and he made special giant ice cubes in tennis-ball cans.

  THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

  STIEG LARSSON, 2005

  SHE IMPROVISED BANDAGES and covered the wound with a makeshift compress. Then she poured the coffee and handed him a sandwich.

  “I’m really not hungry,” he said.

  “I don’t give a damn if you’re hungry. Just eat,” Salander commanded, taking a big bite of her own cheese sandwich.