Product Description

“Every once in awhile a writer of particular skills takes a fresh, seemingly improbable idea and turns out a book of pure delight.” That’s how David McCullough described Mark Kurlansky’s Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World, a work that revealed how a meal can be as important as it is edible. Salt: A World History, its successor, did the same for a seasoning, and confirmed Kurlansky as one of our most erudite and entertaining food authors. Now, the winner of the James Beard Award for Excellence in Food Writing shares a varied selection of “choice cuts” by others, as he leads us on a mouthwatering culinary tour around the world and through history and culture from the fifth century B.C. to the present day.

Choice Cuts features more than two hundred pieces, from Cato to Cab Calloway. Here are essays by Plato on the art of cooking . . . Pablo Neruda on french fries . . . Alice B. Toklas on killing a carp . . . M. F. K. Fisher on the virility of Turkish desserts . . . Alexandre Dumas on coffee . . . W. H. Auden on Icelandic food . . . Elizabeth David on the downward march of English pizza . . . Claude Lévi-Strauss on “the idea of rotten” . . . James Beard on scrambled eggs . . . Balzac, Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, Chekhov, and many other famous gourmands and gourmets, accomplished cooks, or just plain ravenous writers on the passions of cuisine.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #388565 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-25
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.11" h x 5.56" w x 8.54" l, 1.03 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

From Amazon.com
"Food is about agriculture, about ecology, about man's relationship with nature ... about nation-building, cultural struggles, friends and enemies ... and at times, even about sex." Thus Mark Kurlansky, author of the award-winning Cod and Salt, introduces Choice Cuts, his anthology of food writing throughout history. Kurlansky has cast his net very wide and presents a legion of food writers on every possible culinary subject.

The usual suspects are here, sometimes in triplicate: Brilliat Savarin on gourmets, female food-love, and how to gain weight; M.F.K. Fisher on bachelor cooking, the dislike of cabbage, and dinner at France's famed Monsieur Paul's in the 1940s; Elizabeth David on the folly of the garlic press, the glories of toast, and English pizza. But Kurlansky's trail starts much earlier with Plato on cooking (food as a branch of medicine, a notion shared by many modern advertisers), Heroditus on Egyptian dining, and, resoundingly, Mencius, a student of Confucius who, in the third century B.C., implored Chinese leaders to observe saner food and environmental policies.

There is a great deal to digest here, but readers can take small bites at their leisure. Enjoyed in this way, the book provides an endlessly fascinating glimpse of humankind's second--or is it the first?--greatest pleasure. --Arthur Boehm

From Publishers Weekly
James Beard Award-winning author Kurlansky (Cod; Salt), brings together a banquet of historical and modern writings on food. Divided into such chapters as "Memorable Meals" and "Eating Your Vegetables," the book covers the range of writings from food notables to general authors and historians. All the masters are covered, including the father of American food writing, James Beard, with his comments on radishes and hot chocolate; the doyenne of the British post-war kitchen, Elizabeth David, with her rail against the garlic press; as well as M.F.K. Fisher and her witty observations on "bachelor cooking." Kurlansky nicely balances specialist knowledge with just plain love of food, such as Hemingway's descriptive "Fish in the Seine," George Orwell's evocative "Paris Cooks and Waiters," and A.J. Liebling's writing on boxing and food, excerpted from Between Meals. Kurlansky does take readers out of the 20th century and back in history to the Roman Empire, with such writers as Pliny the Elder (writing about bees and honey), Plutarch and the witty poet Martial of Epigrams fame. Folded in between are such food masters as Escoffier, Brillat-Savin, Hannah Glass and Taillevent. Insightful comments and explanations by Kurlansky precede each piece; the resulting volume provides a wide range of tastes certain to tempt any literary palate.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Having tackled the history of cod and salt, Kurlansky now surveys food writing in this tasty collection. As he explains, "Food, like sex, is a writer's great opportunity. It offers material that is both universal and intensely personal." Kurlansky's lively and informative introduction traces the genre's history: the ancient Romans and Greeks wrote about food primarily as "an embellishment to discussions of broader topic"; the earliest known cookbook (a German manuscript) appeared in the 13th century; and the 1825 publication of Brillat-Savarin's literary and philosophical meditation on food, The Physiology of Taste, paved the way for such classic 20th-century food writers and journalists as Elizabeth David and A.J. Liebling. Kurlansky then arranges his selections into thematic chapters: "Food and Sex," "Memorable Meals," "Favorite Restaurants," "Eating Your Vegetables," etc. While the usual culinary suspects (James Beard, M.F.K. Fisher) are well represented here, there are also unusual and intriguing surprises: "Herodutus on Egyptian Dining"; "W.H. Auden and Louise MacNiece on Icelandic Food," "Margaret Mead on the Meaning of Food." A good choice for food studies collections and where anthologies like Endless Feasts, edited by Ruth Reichl, are popular.
Wilda Williams, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.