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Bush foods: Tuesday's food quotation

Rosie continued on the imaginary walkabout. Cutting out a palm-heart, and some lawyer cane, and boiling them up. Looking for eels by torchlight at night. Getting walnut and green ginger. Chopping grubs out of an acacia tree.

1984 R. M. W. Dixon, Searching for Aboriginal Languages, p. 81

Improving frozen chicken: Monday's food quotation

Here is a kitchen improvement, in return for Peacock. For roasting or basting a chicken, render down your fat or butter with cider: about a third cider. Let it come together slowly, till the smell of cider and the smell of fat are as one. This will enliven even a frozen chicken.

1967 Sylvia Townsend Warner, Letter to David Garnett, 21 December 1967 [ Sylvia and David: the Townsend Warner / Garnett letters. Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994, p. 134]

The worst traits of English cooking: Saturday's food quotation

The meal was already on the table when they entered the room. A dish of mince with tomato sauce spread over the top seemed to be the main dish; boiled potatoes and ‘greens’ were on the trolley. Mrs Sedge, who had come to England twenty years ago from Vienna, had apparently retained little knowledge of her country’s cuisine, if she had ever possessed it; Dulcie was always surprised at the thoroughness with which she had acquired all the worst traits of English cooking … The second course was stewed apple and semolina pudding, dishes which Mrs Sedge had mastered to perfection.

1961 Barbara Pym, No fond return of love [Grafton Books, 1987, pp. 107-109]

Ideal and real nutrition: Friday's food quotation

I can take Katherine Whitehorn's remark a stage further: foods are fattening because they are nice. If one ate exclusively things one didn't like, one would be as thin as a rake. I have demonstrated this to my own satisfaction time and time again: were I to start the day with unfrozen pineapple juice, crispy ricicles, cod steaks and malted bread and margarine, together with very strong cheap Indian tea, and carry on the day in the same fashion, I should have no weight problems at all. Unfortunately the flesh is weak. Don't you find this?

1972 Philip Larkin, Letter to Charles Monteith, 13 January 1972 [ Selected letters of Philip Larkin 1940-1985, edited by Anthony Thwaite. Faber and Faber, 1992, p. 452]

The ultimate destiny of a goose: Thursday's food quotation

The goose we retained until this morning, when there were signs that, in spite of the slight frost, it would be well that it should be eaten without delay. Its finder has carried it off therefore to fulfil the ultimate destiny of a goose.

1891 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 'The blue carbuncle'

Beef is a poor substitute for venison: Wednesday's food quotation

... till one of the clock, at which time we made an end; and I went home and took my wife and went to my Cosen Tho. Pepys's and found them just sat down to dinner, which was very good; only the venison pasty was palpable beef, which was not handsome.

1660 Samuel Pepys, Diary, 6 January 1660

Choice of meat in the Greek islands: Tuesday's food quotation

But beef is rare within these oxless isles;
Goat's flesh there is, no doubt, and kid, and mutton;
And, when a holiday upon them smiles,
A joint upon their barbarous spits they put on.

1819 Byron, Don Juan 2.154

Junk = salt meat: Monday's food quotation

Just then a man hailed us from the fire that breakfast was ready, and we were soon seated here and there about the sand over biscuit and fried junk.

1883 R. L. Stevenson, Treasure Island ch. 31

An Englishman fait chabrot: Sunday's food quotation

For the first time I was asked to have lunch with M. et Mme Vinges, our nearest neighbours and closest friends in the village. M. Vinges is a retired roadman of about my age, living on his foreman's pension.
Menu
Bouillon de boeuf with vermicelli. Ending with the ceremony of the chabrot, i.e. pouring half a glass of red wine into the last few spoonfuls of soup, then tipping the soup-plate up and drinking it. Very good. Try it.
Hors d'oeuvres. Paté de Canard truffé (bought at vast expense)
Tomato salad, salami.
Green french beans boiled and fried in butter.
Boiled beef.
Roast poulet-de-grain with green olives in a delicious caper sauce.
Cheese. Cherry cake. Fruit salad of oranges and bananas. Coffee with brandy.

1967 David Garnett, Letter to Sylvia Townsend Warner, 24 October 1967 [ Sylvia and David: the Townsend Warner / Garnett letters. Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994, p. 127]

A classically simple supper: Saturday's food quotation

She set about preparing her supper. It would have to be one of those classically simple meals, the sort that French peasants are said to eat and that enlightened English people sometimes enjoy rather self-consciously – a crusty French loaf, cheese, and lettuce and tomatoes from the garden. Of course there should have been wine and a lovingly prepared dressing of oil and vinegar, but Dulcie drank orange squash and ate mayonnaise that came from a bottle.

1961 Barbara Pym, No fond return of love [Grafton Books, 1987, p. 56]

Why Philip Larkin favoured the EU: Friday's food quotation

One forgets that nobody stays in hotels these days except businessmen & American tourists: the food is geared to the business lunch or the steak-platter trade: portion-control is rampant, and the materials cheap anyway (or so I guess: three lamb chops I had were three uncuttable unchewable unanswerable arguments for entry into EEC if - as I suspect - they had made the frozen journey from New Zealand). The presence of the hotel in the Good Food Guide is nothing short of farce. Of course it's a Trust House, which guarantees a kind of depersonalised dullness. Never stay at a Trust House.

1971 Philip Larkin, Letter to Barbara Pym, 18 July 1971 [Selected letters of Philip Larkin 1940-1985, edited by Anthony Thwaite. Faber and Faber, 1992, p. 441]

Visitor's tea: Thursday's food quotation

Downstairs, the table was laid with a 'visitor's tea'. There were the best tea things with a fat pink rose on the side of each cup; hearts of lettuce, thin bread and butter, and the crisp little cakes that had been baked in readiness that morning. Edmund and Laura sat very upright on their hard windsor chairs. Bread and butter first. Always bread and butter first; they had been told that so many times that it had the finality of a text of Scripture. But Mr Herring, who was the eldest present and ought to have set a good example, began with the little cakes, picking up and examining each one closely before disposing of it in two bites. However, while there were still a few left, Mrs Herring placed bread and butter on his plate and handed him the lettuce meaningly; and when he twisted the tender young hearts of lettuce into tight rolls and dipped them into the salt-cellar she took the spoon and put the salt on the side of his plate.
Mrs Herring ate very genteelly, crumbling her cake on her plate and picking out and putting aside the currants, because, she explained, they did not agree with her. She crooked the little finger of the hand which held her teacup and sipped its contents like a bird, with her eyes turned up to the ceiling.

Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford [Penguin modern classics, 1975, p. 296]

The inexorable spread of oleomargarine: Wednesday's food quotation

Speaking of manufactures reminds me of a talk upon that topic which I heard--which I overheard--on board the Cincinnati boat. I awoke out of a fretted sleep, with a dull confusion of voices in my ears. I listened-- two men were talking; subject, apparently, the great inundation. I looked out through the open transom. The two men were eating a late breakfast; sitting opposite each other; nobody else around. They closed up the inundation with a few words--having used it, evidently, as a mere ice-breaker and acquaintanceship-breeder--then they dropped into business. It soon transpired that they were drummers--one belonging in Cincinnati, the other in New Orleans. Brisk men, energetic of movement and speech; the dollar their god, how to get it their religion. 'Now as to this article,' said Cincinnati, slashing into the ostensible butter and holding forward a slab of it on his knife-blade, 'it's from our house; look at it--smell of it--taste it. Put any test on it you want to. Take your own time--no hurry--make it thorough. There now-- what do you say? butter, ain't it. Not by a thundering sight--it's oleomargarine! Yes, sir, that's what it is--oleomargarine. You can't tell it from butter; by George, an EXPERT can't. It's from our house. We supply most of the boats in the West; there's hardly a pound of butter on one of them. We are crawling right along--JUMPING right along is the word. We are going to have that entire trade. Yes, and the hotel trade, too. You are going to see the day, pretty soon, when you can't find an ounce of butter to bless yourself with, in any hotel in the Mississippi and Ohio Valleys, outside of the biggest cities. Why, we are turning out oleomargarine NOW by the thousands of tons. And we can sell it so dirt-cheap that the whole country has GOT to take it--can't get around it you see. Butter don't stand any show--there ain't any chance for competition. Butter's had its DAY--and from this out, butter goes to the wall. There's more money in oleomargarine than--why, you can't imagine the business we do. I've stopped in every town from Cincinnati to Natchez; and I've sent home big orders from every one of them.' And so-forth and so-on, for ten minutes longer, in the same fervid strain. Then New Orleans piped up and said-- Yes, it's a first-rate imitation, that's a certainty; but it ain't the only one around that's first-rate. For instance, they make olive-oil out of cotton-seed oil, nowadays, so that you can't tell them apart.' 'Yes, that's so,' responded Cincinnati, 'and it was a tip-top business for a while. They sent it over and brought it back from France and Italy, with the United States custom-house mark on it to indorse it for genuine, and there was no end of cash in it; but France and Italy broke up the game--of course they naturally would. Cracked on such a rattling impost that cotton-seed olive-oil couldn't stand the raise; had to hang up and quit.' 'Oh, it DID, did it? You wait here a minute.' Goes to his state-room, brings back a couple of long bottles, and takes out the corks--says: 'There now, smell them, taste them, examine the bottles, inspect the labels. One of 'm's from Europe, the other's never been out of this country. One's European olive-oil, the other's American cotton-seed olive-oil. Tell 'm apart? 'Course you can't. Nobody can. People that want to, can go to the expense and trouble of shipping their oils to Europe and back--it's their privilege; but our firm knows a trick worth six of that. We turn out the whole thing--clean from the word go--in our factory in New Orleans: labels, bottles, oil, everything. Well, no, not labels: been buying them abroad--get them dirt-cheap there. You see, there's just one little wee speck, essence, or whatever it is, in a gallon of cotton-seed oil, that give it a smell, or a flavor, or something--get that out, and you're all right--perfectly easy then to turn the oil into any kind of oil you want to, and there ain't anybody that can detect the true from the false. Well, we know how to get that one little particle out--and we're the only firm that does. And we turn out an olive-oil that is just simply perfect--undetectable! We are doing a ripping trade, too--as I could easily show you by my order-book for this trip. Maybe you'll butter everybody's bread pretty soon, but we'll cotton-seed his salad for him from the Gulf to Canada, and that's a dead-certain thing.' Cincinnati glowed and flashed with admiration. The two scoundrels exchanged business-cards, and rose. As they left the table, Cincinnati said-- 'But you have to have custom-house marks, don't you? How do you manage that?' I did not catch the answer.

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

Golden Chicken: Tuesday's food quotation

A couple have celebrated their golden anniversary by eating a tinned chicken given to them on their wedding day. Les Lailey, 73, a former soldier, and his wife, Beryl, of Denton, Greater Manchester, were given the Buxted chicken, part of a hamper, in 1956 but decided to keep what was regarded as a rare treat.

2006 The Times [London], Wednesday 8 February 2006, p. 2

D. H. Lawrence as vegetable gardener

[Zennor, Cornwall:] For the rest, what is there to say? — I have made wonderful gardens, where things grew by magic: fat marrows, on plants that seemed as if they were going to roam till they encircled the earth; long, flat beans in festoons among the red flowers, and a harvest of peas, myriads of rich full pods — and kohl rabi, and salsify, and scorzonera, and leeks, and spinach, — everything in the world it seems. But we have had massive storms that have smashed my pea-rows back into the earth. Sic transit.

1917 D. H. Lawrence, Letter to Lady Cynthia Asquith, 3 September 1917 [ Letters, vol. 3, pp 157–8]

Judging doughnuts: Sunday's food quotation

Lucy took a single plain donut from the bag and held it for me to take a bite. Tender and light and still warm from the frying. Not too sugary.

1995 Robert Crais, Voodoo River ch. 30

Frugal cruising: Saturday's food quotation

The eating regime on board went as follows: breakfast ... lunch ... happy hour ... and dinner (grilled red snapper with caramelised onions and Duchess potatoes , followed by glazed apple tartlets on vanilla cream).

2005 Travel puff in the Independent on Sunday [London], 16 December

Paris restaurants: Friday's food quotation

Ten cooks' shops! ... and all within three minutes' driving! one would think that all the cooks in the world ... had said -- Come, let us all go live at Paris: the French love good eating -- they are all gourmands -- we shall rank high.

1765 Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy l. 7 ch. 17

Crêpes Suzette in Llangattock: Thursday's food quotation

I am off to Carmarthenshire next week to eat Crêpes Suzettes at the Red Lion in Llangattock, a hideous village where a mysterious M. Pierre has chosen to napkin his talent. (They are the best I have ever eaten).

1967 Sylvia Townsend Warner, Letter to David Garnett, 4 April [Sylvia and David: the Townsend Warner / Garnett letters (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994) p. 118]

Not-so-frugal breakfast: Wednesday's food quotation

There was a little plate of hothouse nectarines on the table, and there was another of grapes, and another of sponge-cakes, and there was a bottle of light wine ... 'This is my frugal breakfast ... Give me my peach, my cup of coffee, and my claret.'

1853 Charles Dickens, Bleak House ch. 19

Workers' supper: Tuesday's food quotation

Supper was at nine. There were cakes, buns, sandwiches, tea, and coffee, all free; but if you wanted mineral water you had to pay for it. Gallantry often led young men to offer the ladies ginger beer.

1915 W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage ch. 104

A Golden Age: Monday's food quotation

From the greengrocer tree you get grapes and green pea, cauliflower, pineapple, and cranberries,
While the pastrycook plant cherry brandy will grant, apple puffs, and three-corners, and Banburys.

1882 W. S. Gilbert, Iolanthe act 2

Breakfast in bed in San Francisco: Sunday's food quotation

Michael was serving Mona breakfast in bed: poached eggs, nine-grain toast, Italian roast coffee and French sausages from Marcel & Henri.

1978 Armistead Maupin, Tales of the City [Corgi ed. p. 147]

Fish and chips in Edinburgh: Saturday's food quotation

He stopped for fish and chips, which he ate at a formica-topped table in the chip shop. Lashings of salt, vinegar and brown sauce on the chips. Two slices of white pan bread thinly spread with margarine. And a cup of dark-brown tea.

1992 Ian Rankin, Strip Jack ch. 6

Victorian tea: Friday's food quotation

So Guster ... prepares the little drawing-room for tea ... There is excellent provision made of dainty new bread, crusty twists, cool fresh butter, thin slices of ham, tongue and German sausage, and delicate little rows of anchovies nestling in parsley; not to mention new-laid eggs, to be brought up warm in a napkin, and hot buttered toast.

1853 Charles Dickens, Bleak House ch. 19

Rye bread and other cures for constipation: Thursday's food quotation

He tells me ... that I must drink now and then ale with my wine, and eat bread and butter and honey -- and rye bread if I can endure it, it being loosening.

1663 Samuel Pepys, Diary, 17 November

What to do with four-day-old bread: Wednesday's food quotation

Alway thy soveraynes bred thow choppe, & þat it be newe & able;
se alle oþer bred a day old or þou choppe to þe table;
alle howsold bred iii. dayes old, so it is profitable;
and trencher bred iiii. dayes is convenyent & agreable.

c. 1465 John Russell, Boke of Nurture 53 ff.

Beware of cold junket: Tuesday's food quotation

Bewar at eve of crayme of cowe & also of the goote, þauy it be late,
of strawberies & hurtilberyes with the cold joncate,
for þese may marre many a mann.

c. 1465 John Russell, Boke of Nurture 53 ff.

A banquet for Queen Catherine: Monday's food quotation

There was v cours of fflesshe to every messe of mete, and at every cours vii disshes, and aftir that a cours of frute of v disshes, and than cam in wafers and ipocras. This banket began at vii of the clok and contynued two hourys.

1503 Receyt of the Lady Kateryne, 4, line 307

Fig Sunday: Sunday's food quotation

Palm Sunday, known locally as Fig Sunday, was a minor hamlet festival. ... The children ... loved the old custom of eating figs on Palm Sunday. The week before, the innkeeper's wife would get in a stock to be sold in pennyworths in her small grocery store. Some of the more expert cooks among the women would use these to make fig puddings for dinner and the children bought pennyworths and ate them out of screws of blue sugar paper on their way to Sunday school. ... The original significance of eating figs on that day had long been forgotten; but it was regarded as an important duty, and children ordinarily selfish would give one of their figs, or at least a bite out of one, to the few unfortunates who had been given no penny.

Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford (Penguin modern classics, 1975, p. 231)

The odour of Burgundy: Saturday's food quotation

The odour of Burgundy, and the smell of French sauces, and the sight of clean napkins and long loaves, knocked as a very welcome visitor at the door of our inner man. We pegged and quaffed away in silence for a while ...

1889 Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat ch. 19

Nanny's delicacies: Friday's food quotation

We used the house in Rutland Gate only occasionally for the London season. Most of the time it was either let or stood unoccupied; then, very, very rarely, one or two of us were allowed to stay for a few days with Nanny in the Mews, a tiny flat, formerly chauffeur's quarters at the back of the house over the garage. Life in the Mews had the quality of camping out. There was no cook there, so Nanny did the cooking, and she sometimes let us help her prepare unfamiliar delicacies whose recipes she dug up somewhere out of her memory: prune whip, tripe and onions, bread pudding.

1978 Jessica Mitford, Hons and rebels (Quartet Books) p. 42

Gilbert White makes blackcurrant jelly: Thursday's food quotation

10 July: Preserved cherries, & currans; & made curran-jelly. Not one mess of wood-strawberries brought this year ...
22 July: Made black-curran jelly, & rasp: jam.

1785 Gilbert White [Gilbert White's year, OUP, 1982]

Chocolate at Fordlow Feast: Wednesday's food quotation

"At the beginning of the 'eighties [1880s] the outside world remembered Fordlow Feast to the extent of sending one old woman with a gingerbread stall. On it were gingerbread babies with currants for eyes, brown-and-white striped peppermint humbugs, sticks of pink-and-white rock, and a few boxes and bottles of other sweets. Even there, on that little old stall with its canvas awning, the first sign of changing taste might have been seen, for, one year, side by side with the gingerbread babies, stood a box filled with thin, dark brown slabs packed in pink paper. 'What is that brown sweet?' asked Laura, spelling out the word 'Chocolate'. A visiting cousin, being fairly well educated and a great reader already knew it by name, 'Oh, that's chocolate,' he said off-handedly. 'But don't buy any; it's for drinking. They have it for breakfast in France.' A year or two later, chocolate was a favourite sweet even in a place as remote as the hamlet."

Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford (Penguin modern classics, 1975, p. 231)

What, if anything, is Instant Postum? Tuesday's food quotation

You are a damned idle dog, why don't you send me the Latin tag on the Sparrow memorial that I want for my very good story? I tell you, you will regret it if you trifle with me. I have put you into it, a very agreeable character so far, reading the Decline and Fall and eating white currants. But it is well within my means to make you read the Encyclopaedia Britannica and drink Instant Postum.

1926 Sylvia Townsend Warner, Letter to David Garnett, 1 December [ Sylvia and David: the Townsend Warner / Garnett letters (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994) p. 31]. Note: The story, entitled 'The maze', was actually published in The Salutation in 1932. Mr Slumber remains aloof from the villagers, reading Herodotus and eating whitecurrants.

The question posed above has been miraculously answered by 'Stargzer', a regular contributor to the Alphadictionary forum:

It's a coffee substitute created by C. W. Post (of Post Cereals) in 1895. My uncle used to drink it when I was a kid. I had it once or twice, but don't remember much. I think it was vaguely coffee-flavored. As for me, I bought a used espresso maker for US$5.00 which I keep at work. A 12-ounce espresso can keep me going for the day.

European cranberries: Monday's food quotation

Cran-berries are offered at the door.

1788 Gilbert White, Diary, 9 July [Gilbert White's year, OUP, 1982]

Milk, bread, bloaters and right-wing politics: Sunday's food quotation

The law requiring pasteurization of milk in England was a particular target of Uncle Geoff's. Fond of alliteration, he dubbed it the "Murdered Milk Measure", and established the Liberty Restoration League, with headquarters at his house in London, for the specific purpose of organizing a counter-offensive. "Freedom, not Doctordom!" was the League's proud slogan. A subsidiary, but nevertheless important, activity of the League was advocacy of a return to the "unsplit, slowly smoked bloater" and bread made with "English stone-ground flour, yeast, milk, sea salt and raw cane sugar.

Wherever he went Uncle Geoff carried stacks of copies of his letters to the Times and Spectator, together with printed directions for preparing unsplit, slowly smoked bloaters and home-made bread. My mother gave wholehearted support to his ideas on health, to which she added a few of her own. Not only were we strictly forbidden to eat any tinned food, but adherence to Mosaic diet laws was enforced as rigidly as in any orthodox Jewish household. Pork, shellfish, rabbit were proscribed for schoolroom fare on the grounds that Moses had considered these foods unhealthy for consumption by the Israelites, and because my mother had a theory that Jews never got cancer.

1978 Jessica Mitford, Hons and rebels (Quartet Books) p. 29

Chocolat Angélique and its preliminaries: Saturday's food quotation

Last night the Cronyns ... came to dinner. I gave them:
Soup. Bayonne ham and salad. Paella and red cabbage sweet and sour cooked in wine with apple and onions, Chocolat Angelique, cheese. Chocolat Angelique is made with 2 oz butter, 2 oz grated chocolate, 4 tablespoons of sugar, 3/4 pint of milk - boiled down to a thick cream - then 3 tablespoons of rum stirred in.

1973 Sylvia Townsend Warner, Letter to David Garnett, 21 February [ Sylvia and David: the Townsend Warner / Garnett letters (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994) p. 173]

Bingo's picnic: Friday's food quotation

'I've just been superintending the packing of the lunch-basket ... There's ham sandwiches ... and tongue sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs and lobster and a cold chicken and sardines and a cake and a couple of bottles of Bollinger and some old brandy --'

1930 P. G. Wodehouse, Very Good, Jeeves! 'Jeeves and the old school chum'

Austrian home made spirits: Thursday's food quotation

'By the way, just try this Schnapps ...' It was juniper-spirit, of the year 1882. With all respect for its antiquity, I found myself unable to appreciate the stuff. Then he gave me ... some of his own Obstler (made of apples) only three weeks old. A little crude, but of good promise. So we went through the lot. His own Zwetschgenwasser -- excellent! Then Kirsch, from the neighbouring village of Tiefis, which makes a speciality of this Schnapps, distilled from the small mountain cherries; of mighty pleasant flavour. Next, Enzian; the product of the yellow Alpine gentian. Whoever likes Enzian -- and who can help liking it? -- will have nothing to say against that of our Silberthal, which has a well-deserved reputation for this brand. Beerler, I enquire? No, he says; nobody makes bilberry spirit any more. 'Which is a pity.' 'This infernal war --' 'It has shattered all the refinements of life.'

1923 Norman Douglas,Together chapter 2

A greedy Puritan: Wednesday's food quotation

I found him, fast by the teeth, i' the cold Turkey-pye, i' the cupboard, with a great white loafe on his left hand, and a glasse of Malmesey on his right.

1631 Ben Jonson, Bartholmew Faire act 1 scene 6

Conservative propaganda: Tuesday's food quotation

My mother was a staunch supporter of Conservative Party activities. Although she was never particularly enthusiastic about our local Member of Parliament ("such a dull little creature," she would say sadly), Muv campaigned faithfully at each election. Crowds of placid villagers were assembled on the lawn at Swinbrook house to be harangued by our uncles on the merits of the Conservative Party, and later to be fed thick meat sandwiches, pound cake, and cups of nice strong tea. Our family always had its booth at the annual Oxfordshire Conservative Fête, where we sold eggs, vegetables from the kitchen garden, and quantities of cut flowers.

Jessica Mitford, Hons and rebels (Quartet Books, 1978) p. 19

Baker's cake: Monday's food quotation

The Monday of the Feast [Fordlow Feast] was kept by women and children only, the men being at work. It was a great day for tea parties; mothers and sisters and aunts and cousins coming in droves from about the neighbourhood. The chief delicacy at these teas was 'baker's cake', a rich, fruity, spicy dough cake, obtained in the following manner. The housewife provided all the ingredients excepting the dough, putting raisins and currants, lard, sugar, and spice in a basin which she gave to the baker, who added the dough, made and baked the cake, and returned it, beautifully browned in his big oven. The charge was the same as that for a loaf of bread the same size, and the result was delicious."

Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford (Penguin modern classics, 1975, p. 231)

The Divers dined on bouillabaisse: Sunday's food quotation

The Divers went to Nice and dined on a bouillabaisse, which is a stew of rock fish and small lobsters, highly seasoned with saffron, and a bottle of cold Chablis.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the night (Penguin classics, 2000, p. 287)

Virginia Woolf's passion for cooking: Saturday's food quotation

I have only one passion in life -- cooking. I have just bought a superb oil stove. I can cook anything. I am free forever of cooks. I cooked veal cutlets and cake today. I assure you it is better than writing these more than idiotic books.

1929 Virginia Woolf, Letter to Vita Sackville-West, 26 September [A reflection of the other person: the letters of Virginia Woolf, volume IV, 1929-1931 (Chatto & Windus, 1978) no. 2073]

The first cantaloupe melon: Friday's food quotation

August 22: Cut the first Cantaleupe, the largest of the Crop: weighed 3 pds. 5 oun: & half. It proved perfectly delicate, dry, & firm, notwithstanding the unfavourable weather ever since the time of setting.

1758 Gilbert White, Diaries [Gilbert White's year (OUP, 1982)]

Christmas sandwiches: Thursday's food quotation

29 December. Snow in the night and when we stop for our sandwiches on the road to Garsdale Head Dentdale is in immaculate relief with the Howgills ghostly beyond. They're Christmas sandwiches (cold pheasant, apple sauce, Cumberland sauce and lettuce, followed by mince pies) then we go on down to Mallerstang.

2002 Alan Bennett, Diary [Untold stories p. 303]

The English for pâté de foie gras d'oie: Wednesday's food quotation

'... Here's a little pie (a gem this is, both for size and quality), made in France. And what do you suppose it's made of? Livers of fat geese. There's a pie! Now let's see you eat 'em.' 'Thank you, sir,' I replied, '... they are too rich for me.'

1852 Charles Dickens, Bleak House ch. 3

Buying sweets at Swinbrook: Tuesday's food quotation

Burford has, indeed, become a sort of minor Stratford-on-Avon, its ancient inns carefully made up to combine modern comfort with a Tudor air. You can even get Coca-Cola there, though it may be served at room temperature ... For some reason Swinbrook, only three miles away, seems to have escaped the tourist trade, and has remained as I remember it more than thirty years ago. In the tiny village post office the same four kinds of sweets -- toffee, acid drops, Edinburgh Rock and butterscotch -- are still displayed in the same four large cut-glass jars ranged in the window.

1978 Jessica Mitford, Hons and rebels (Quartet Books, 1978) p. 9

Swiss rarebit: Monday's food quotation

Their destination was a hotel with an old-fashioned Swiss tap-room, wooden and resounding , a room of clocks, kegs, steins, and antlers. Many parties at long tables blurred into one great party and ate fondue -- a peculiarly indigestible form of Welsh rarebit, mitigated by hot spiced wine.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the night [Penguin classics, 2000, p. 191]

Slipcoat cheese: Sunday's food quotation

My Lady of Middlesex makes excellent slipp-coat cheese of good morning milk, putting cream to it.

c. 1648 Kenelm Digby, The Closet Open'd

Cheese, green cheese and spermyse: Saturday's food quotation

There is iiii. sortes of chese ... grene chese, softe chese, harde chese or spermyse. Grene chese is not called grene by the reason of colour, but for the newnes of it, for the whay is not half pressed out of it, and in operacion it is colde and moyste ... Spermyse is a chese the which is made with curdes and with the iuce of herbes.

1542 Andrew Boorde, Compendyous Regyment

English cheeses in the 16th century: Friday's food quotation

And here in Englande be diuers kindes of cheeses, as Suff., Essex, Banburie &c. according to their places and feeding of their cattel, time of the yere, layre of their kine, clenlinesse of their dayres, quantitie of their butter.

1562 Wilyam Bulleyn [cited by F. J. Furnivall in Early English Meals and Manners (1868)]

Somerset proverb: Thursday's food quotation

If you will have a good cheese, and have 'n old, you must turn 'n seven times before he is cold.

1678 John Ray, English Proverbs

Specialties of Ville Platte, Louisiana: Wednesday's food quotation

Across from the Pig Stand there was a little mom-and-pop grocery with a hand-painted sign that said We sell boudin and a smaller sign that said Fresh cracklins ... The boudin were plump and juicy, and when you bit into them they were filled with rice and pork and cayenne and onions and celery.

1995 Robert Crais, Voodoo River

Restless house guests, a problem for the thoughtful housekeeper: Tuesday's food quotation

I am writing under great difficulties -- that is I am entertaining week end visitors. Do you ever let yourself in for that particular effort? One keeps looking to see if they are enjoying themselves. They aren't. Well then what can one do? Suggest a picnic. But the mutton is almost ready. Never mind -- we will eat it at dinner. So that is what is happening this very instant in Sussex -- we are going to boil some eggs and go off to a wood and sit on the roots of beech trees among pine needles and ants in a high wind and eat hardboiled eggs -- dont you wish you were with us? Well, I rather do.

Virginia Woolf, Letter to Dorothy Bussy, 1 September 1929 [A reflection of the other person: the letters of Virginia Woolf, volume IV, 1929-1931 (London, Chatto & Windus, 1978) no. 2066]

A spice garden: Monday's food quotation

Ther was eek wexing many a spyce,
As clow-gelofre, and licoryce,
Gingere, and greyn de par[ad]ys,
Canelle, and setewale of prys,
And many a spyce delitable
To eten whan men ryse fro table.

c. 1370 Geoffrey Chaucer, Romaunt of the Rose.

Chaucer was translating from French, and here's the original French text he was working from. I first used this quotation in Dangerous Tastes: on this page, as a bonus, you can find the complete description of this dream spice-garden, in old French (with modern English translation) and in Chaucer's middle English version.

Marriage is like vinegar: Sunday's food quotation

Marriage from love, like vinegar from wine --
A sad, sour, sober beverage -- by time
Is sharpen'd from its high celestial flavour,
Down to a very homely household savour.

1819 Byron, Don Juan canto 3 verse 5

Not finding treasure: Saturday's food quotation

'Dig away, boys,' said Silver, with the coolest insolence; 'you'll find some pig-nuts and I shouldn't wonder.'

1862 R. L. Stevenson, Treasure Island ch. 31. the Oxford English Dictionary identifies pig-nuts in this quotation with earth-nuts, Bunium Bulbocastanum. Is that really what Long John Silver meant?

The problem with ordering fruit-trees from catalogues: Friday's food quotation

Gather'd the only & first Apricot the tree ever bore, it was a fair fruit, but not the sort sent for: being an Orange & not a Breda. Scarce any of Murdoch Middleton's trees turnout the sorts sent-for.

Gilbert White, Diary 5 August 1765 [Gilbert White's year, 1982]

Supper at Haileybury college in 1856: Thursday's food quotation

Elliot would make us a little supper of delicacies which his mother used to send him from Trinidad, namely chocolate, cassava cakes, and a peculiarly delicious jam known as 'Governor's plum' jam.

1896 John Beames, Memoirs of a Bengal Civilian chapter 4

Surfeit of rabbits: Wednesday's food quotation

We seem to live on stewed rabbit day after day, until even the cats turn up their noses. The truth is the keeper caught 4 rabbits in the garden last week. And as "Ecomonie" is the watch word of our house, we must perforce mange lapin.

1929 Carrington, letter to Julia Strachey, February? [from Carrington: letters and extracts from her diaries (1970)]

Not eating prunes: Tuesday's food quotation

She was not a girl who believed in mincing her words, and a racy little anecdote she told about a man who refused to eat prunes had the effect of causing me to be a non-starter for the last two courses.

1930 P. G. Wodehouse, Very Good, Jeeves! 'Jeeves and the old school chum'

Nesquik, preferably strawberry: Monday's food quotation

[Tracey Emin] memorably records that her mother worked at a club in Ramsgate called Gay Nights, and that at one time her diet consisted only of fish fingers and Nesquik ('preferably strawberry').

2005 Henry Hitchings, review of Tracey Emin's Strangeland in the Times Literary Supplement (23 December 2005) p. 9

Tropical fruit in 18th century England: Sunday's food quotation

December 10: Mr Taylor brought me a pine-apple, which was, for the season, large, & well-flavoured ... Eat a very delicate Cantaleupe: it had a bottle-nose, & grew close to the stem. Sav'd ye seed.

1792 Gilbert White, Diary (Gilbert White's year, 1982).

Especially prized were English pineapples, grown with absurd labours in a hothouse 'pinery', an accessory to a country estate which, says [Fran] Beauman, 'every self-respecting aristocrat' aspired to possess.

2005 Bee Wilson, Review of Fran Beauman, The Pineapple in the Times Literary Supplement (2 December 2005) p. 36.

The guga harvest: Saturday's food quotation

The occupants of Lewis rowed over to Sula Sgeir (sula is a Hebridean name for gannet and is also the generic name for many of the gannet's relatives) each autumn to take the fat young gugas, a right that they still maintain today, although the traditional guga harvests at other colonies have ceased.

2005 Christopher Perrins, review of Birds Britannica in the Times Literary Supplement (9 December 2005) p. 27.

In Europe, order from alapage.com

Market in colonial Malaya: Friday's food quotation

There was loud leisurely chaffering in the market over rambutans, aubergines, red and green peppers, Chinese oranges, white cabbages, dried fish-strips and red-raw buffalo-meat. The smells rose into the high blue coastal air.

1958 Anthony Burgess, The Enemy in the Blanket chapter 2

In Europe, order from alapage.com

Chiscakes for Christmas: Thursday's food quotation

There was hardly any snow in the valley — all green with the yew-berries still sprinkling the causeway. At Ambergate my sister had sent a motor car for us — so we were at Ripley in time for turkey and Christmas pudding. — My God, what masses of food here, turkey, large tongues, long wall of roast loin of pork, pork-pies, sausages, mince pies, dark cakes covered with almonds, chiscakes, lemon-tarts, jellies, endless masses of food, with whiskey, gin, port-wine, burgundy, muscatel. It seems incredible. We played charades — the old people of 67 playing away harder than the young ones —and lit the christmas tree, and drank healths, and sang, and roared — Lord above. If only one hadn’t all the while a sense that next week would be the same dreariness as before. — What a good party we might have had, had we felt really free of the world.

1918 D. H. Lawrence, Letter to Katherine Mansfield, 27 December (Letters of D. H. Lawrence vol. 3 p. 313)

Note: Lawrence and Frieda were staying with his sister, Ada Clarke, at Ripley near Derby, from where this was written. According to the editors, the "chiscakes" were a Nottingham version of "cheesecakes" or "chiskets".

Quotations for Christmas week

Daily quotations for 21 to 28 December are on this page

Medlars of the second kind: Tuesday's food quotation

It is very dry here — all the roses out, and drying up, all the grass cut, the earth brown. There is a lot of land, peasant land, to this house. I have just been down in the valley by the cisterns, in a lemon grove that smells very sweet, getting summer nespoli. Nespoli look like apricots, and taste a bit like them — but they’re pear-shaped. They’re a sort of medlar. Wish you had some, they are delicious, and we’ve got treefuls. The sea is pale and shimmery today, the prickly pears are in yellow blossom.

1920 D. H. Lawrence, letter to Lady Cynthia Asquith, 7 May [The Cambridge Edition of the Letters of D. H. Lawrence (Cambridge, 1984) vol. 3 p.517].

Modest sustenance: Monday's food quotation

I love no rost but a nut-browne toste
And a crab laid in the fyre;
A little breade shall do me stead,
Much breade I not desyre.

c. 1560 Gammer Gurton's Needle

Sunday dinner for D. H. Lawrence: Sunday's food quotation

Did I tell you we’ve got such a good oven in our kitchen. Being Sunday, roast beef, baked potatoes, spinach, apple pie. Also I made heavenly chocolate cakes and dropped them, burning my finger — also exquisite rock cakes, and forgot to put the fat in!! And we are in for 3 tea-parties this week. But I shall call the pseudo-rock-cakes currant bread — quite good, oppure.

1920 D. H. Lawrence, Letter to Mary Cannon [Letters, vol. 3 p. 637]

Truffles and how to prepare them: Saturday's food quotation

A trufle-hunter called on us, having in his pocket several large trufles found in this neighbourhood. He says these roots are not to be found in deep woods, but in narrow hedge rows & skirts of coppices. Some trufles, he informed us, lie two feet within the earth; & some quite on the surface: the latter, he added, have little or no smell, & are not so easily discovered by the dogs as those that lie deeper. Half a crown a pound was the price which he asked for this commodity.

1789 Gilbert White, Diary, October 11 [Gilbert White's year (OUP, 1982)]

Stewed some trufles: the flavour of their juice very fine, but the roots hard, & gritty. They were boiled in water, then sliced, & stewed in gravy.

1790 ib., November 4

James Bond's gastronomy: Friday's food quotation

Later, as Bond was finishing his first straight whisky 'on the rocks' and was contemplating the paté de foie gras and cold langouste which the waiter had just laid out for him, the telephone rang.

1953 Ian Fleming, Casino Royale

The power of malt whisky: Thursday's food quotation

She brought a hand from behind her back, showing a bottle of Macallan. 'Peace offering,' she said.

1997 Ian Rankin, Black and Blue chapter 10

Lunch for Julian Maclaren-Ross (serving suggestion): Wednesday's food quotation

... a late lunch at the Scala in Charlotte Street, roast beef with as much fat as possible and lashings of horse-radish sauce.

1968 London Magazine (December 1968) p. 32.

Don't try this at home: punch as made in colonial Malaya. Tuesday's food quotation

He had emptied most of the bottled beer, a quart of stout, a flask of Beehive Brandy, half a bottle of Wincarnis, and the remains of the whisky into a kitchen pail. He had seasoned this foaming broth with red peppers.

1958 Anthony Burgess, The Enemy in the Blanket chapter 4

John Banville's gastronomic sins: Monday's food quotation

I have a glass or two of red wine with dinner. I love big Italian red wines and New Zealand whites. Brandy is my tipple: I can't keep the stuff in the house, because I would drink it by the gallon. My biggest sin is chocolates from L'Artisan du Chocolat, in London. You have to get a second mortgage in order to buy a small box of chocolates. I don't worry about my health. In response to a scare about butter I remember John Mortimer saying, 'Am I really going to give this up for an extra two weeks in the old folk's home in Lyme Regis?' That is the rule I live by.

John Banville (this year's Booker Prize winner) interviewed by John Briffa for The Observer [London], 13 November 2005. Full article

When did American strawberries engulf Europe? Sunday's food quotation

1st July: Large American straw-berries are hawked about which the sellers call pine-strawberries. But these are oblong, & of a pale red; where as the true pine or Drayton strawberries are flat, & green: yet the flavour is very quick, & truly delicate. The American new sorts of strawberries prevail so much, that the old scarlet, & hautboys are laid aside, & out of use.

1791 Gilbert White (from Gilbert White's year [OUP, 1982])

Dharma Bums: Saturday's food quotation

"Now as for food, I went down to Market Street to the Crystal Palace market and bought my favorite dry cereal, bulgur, which is a kind of Bulgarian cracked rough wheat and I'm going to stick pieces of bacon in it, little square chunks, that'll make a fine supper for all three of us, Morley and us. And I'm bringing tea, you always want a good cup of hot tea under those cold stars. And I'm bringing real chocolate pudding, not that instant phony stuff but good chocolate pudding that I'll bring to a boil and stir over the fire and then let cool ice cold in the snow."
"Oh boy!"
"So insteada rice this time, which I usually bring, I thought I'd make a nice delicacy for you, R-a-a-y, and in the bulgur too I'm going to throw in all kinds of dried diced vegetables I bought at the Ski Shop. We'll have our supper and breakfast outa this, and for energy food this big bag of peanuts and raisins and another bag with dried apricot and dried prunes oughta fix us for the rest."
And he showed me the very tiny bag in which all this important food for three grown men for twenty-four hours or more climbing at high altitudes was stored.

1976 Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums (Penguin ed. p. 36)

Clabber and cornbread: Friday's food quotation

What you got to eat, Miss Celie? he say, going straight to the warmer and a piece of fried chicken, then on to the safe for a slice of blackberry pie. He stand by the table and munch, munch. You got any sweet milk? he ast.
Got clabber, I say.
He say, Well, I love clabber. And dip him out some ...
He rummage through the drawer for a spoon to eat the clabber with. He see a slice of cornbread on the shelf back of the stove, he grab it and crumble it into the glass.
Us go back out on the porch and he put his foots up on the railing. Eat his clabber and cornbread with the glass near bout to his nose. Remind me of a hog at the troth.

2004 Alice Walker, The color purple (Phoenix ed., p. 58)

Carrington in Vienna: Saturday's food quotation

Life here is just as expensive as England and the food is horrible. Everything has an overcoat of batter. The meat often wears two waistcoats and 2 mackintoshes to conceal its identity. The very cakes wear masks. The butter is ashy pale and tasteless. I had chicken last night that tasted of fried mongoose.

Carrington, letter to Lytton Strachey, 28 February 1922 [from Carrington: letters and extracts from her diaries (1970)]

I'm off to New York. The next quotation on the FOOD WORD site will appear on Friday 9 December

One to avoid: Friday's food quotation

The New Scientist cites a case of three campers in Scotland who mistook Cortinarius speciosissimus for chanterelle. Two victims had to get a kidney transplant.

From www.ibiblio.org

Tiffin in colonial Malaya: Thursday's food quotation

Hood said it was time for tiffin and they sought the rest house. Hood ordered a portion of fried fish, a steak with onions and chipped potatoes, a dish of chopped pineapple and tinned cream.

1956 Anthony Burgess, Time for a Tiger chapter 1

Travel in the Basque country: Wednesday's food quotation

'Is the wine included?' 'Oh, yes.' ...
I went out and told the woman what a rum punch was and how to make it. In a few minutes a girl brought a stone pitcher, steaming, into the room. Bill came over from the piano and we drank the hot punch and listened to the wind.
'There isn't too much rum in that.'
I went over to the cupboard and brought the rum bottle and poured a half-tumblerful into the pitcher.
'Direct action,' said Bill. 'It beats legislation.'
The girl came in and laid the table for supper ... [she] brought in a big bowl of hot vegetable soup and the wine. We had fried trout afterward and some sort of a stew and a big bowl full of wild strawberries. We did not lose money on the wine, and the girl was shy but nice about bringing it. The old woman looked in once and counted the empty bottles.

1927 Ernest Hemingway, Fiesta chapter 11

A New York lunch: Tuesday's food quotation

I took Marino to lunch at Tatou ... 'What you got by the glass that's worth drinking?' he asked ... I suggested he try a Beringer reserve cabernet that I knew was good, and then we ordered cups of lentil soup and spaghetti bolognese.

1995 Patricia Cornwell, From Potter's Field chapter 6

Lunch for a captive Frenchman: Monday's food quotation

He could see it all laid out on the table beside his bed -- a good meal it looked -- cold ham and galantine, an omelette, a salad, cheese, and a small decanter of red wine.

1924 John Buchan, The Three Hostages

Christmas dinner on a camping trip in the Australian outback: Sunday's food quotation

She squatted there at the fire. She put on the rabbit pieces ... after smearing them with mustard and muttered to herself 'lapin moutarde'. She wrapped the rabbit in tin foil and wormed them down into the coals with a flat stick. She put the corn cobs on to boil, candied the carrots with sugar sachets from the motel, put on the beans, wrapped the potatoes in foil and placed them on the coals. She then heated the lobster bisque, throwing in a dash of her bloody mary ... She put the plum pudding on to be warmed and mixed a careful custard. He opened a bottle of 1968 Coonawarra Cabernet Shiraz.

1986 Frank Moorhouse, 'Bearing party objective' in London magazine (July 1986) p. 8.

Americans in Paris: Saturday's food quotation

We ate dinner at Madame Lecomte's restaurant on the far side of the [Ile Saint Louis]. It was crowded with Americans ... We had a good meal, a roast chicken, new green beans, mashed potatoes, a salad, and some apple-pie and cheese.

1927 Ernest Hemingway, Fiesta chapter 11

A Carthaginian feast: Friday's food quotation

First they were served birds in green sauce, on red earthenware plates decorated with black patterns, then all the kinds of shell-fish found on the Punic shores, wheaten porridge, beans and barley, and snails in cumin, on plates of golden amber.

Then the tables were covered with meat dishes: antelopes with their horns, peacocks with their feathers, whole sheep cooked in sweet wine, haunches of she-camels and buffaloes, hedgehogs in garum, fried grasshoppers and preserved dormice. In wooden bowls from Tamrapanni great lumps of fat floated in saffron. Everything overflowed with wine, truffles, and assa foetida. Pyramids of fruit tumbled over honey-cakes, and they had not forgotten a few little dogs with big bellies and pink bristles, fattened on olive-pulp, that Carthaginian delicacy which other people found revolting. The unexpected sight of novel food aroused their greed. Gauls, with long hair tied up on the top of their head, snatched watermelons and lemons, devouring them peel and all. The Negroes who had never seen lobsters tore their faces on the red claws. But shaven Greeks, whiter than marble, threw behind them the peelings from their plate, while shepherds from Bruttium, dressed in wolf skins, munched in silence, heads bent over their food.

1862 Flaubert, Salammbô chapter 1. Translation by A. J. Krailsheimer

For a longer extract, with the French text and another translation, click here

They are what they eat ... : Thursday's food quotation

Your city wives ... you see by the finenesse and delicacy of their diet, diving into the fat capons, drinking your rich wines, feeding on larkes, sparrowes, potato-pies, and such good unctuous meats, how their wits are refin'd and rarefi'd!

1616 Ben Jonson, Every Man out of his Humour act 2 scene 3

'Chips of potatoes' in pre-Revolutionary Paris? Wednesday's food quotation

Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomies in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potatoes, fried with some reluctant drops of oil.

1859 Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities part 1 chapter 5

Chinese New Year in colonial Malaya: Tuesday's food quotation

He had been smothered with Chinese New Year hospitality. Bird's nest, shark's fin, sucking pig, boiled duck, bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, huge staring fish, sweet-and-sour prawns, stuffed gourds, crisp fried rice and chicken-wings. And whisky.

1958 Anthony Burgess, The Enemy in the Blanket chapter 1

Fishing on the banks of the Thames: Monday's food quotation

The neighbourhood of Streatley and Goring is a great fishing centre. The river abounds in pike, roach, dace, gudgeon, and eels, just here; and you can sit and fish for them all day. Some people do. They never catch them.

1889 Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat chapter 17

Uses for Algerian wine: Sunday's quotation

'That old fool Craggs ... is as randy as a stoat. I threw a glass of Algerian wine over him once when he was trying to rape me.'

1971 Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish a Room p. 79 Fontana ed.

The treacle well: Saturday's food quotation

'Once upon a time there were three little sisters,' the Dormouse began ..., 'and they lived at the bottom of a well --'
'What did they live on?' said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking.
'They lived on treacle,' said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two.
'They couldn't have done that, you know,' Alice gently remarked. 'They'd have been ill.'
'So they were,' said the Dormouse; ' very ill.'
Alice tried a little to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary way of living would have been like, but it puzzled her too much, so she went on: 'But why did they live at the bottom of a well?' ...
The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said, 'It was a treacle-well.'
'There's no such thing!' Alice was beginning very angrily, but ... the Dormouse sulkily remarked, 'If you can't be civil, you'd better finish the story for yourself.'
'No, please go on!' Alice said, very humbly. 'I won't interrupt you again. I dare say there may be one.'

1865 Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland chapter 7

Some unusual foods from Truman Capote: Friday's quotation

When she [Ottilie] opened the sewing basket, she made a sinister discovery: there, like a gruesome ball of yarn, was the severed head of a yellow cat. So, the miserable old woman was up to new tricks! She wants to put a spell, thought Ottilie, not in the least frightened. Primly lifting the head by one of its ears, she carried it to the stove and dropped it into a boiling pot: at noon Old Bonaparte sucked her teeth and remarked that the soup Ottilie had made for her was surprisingly tasty.

The next morning, just in time for the midday meal, she found twisting in her basket a small green snake which, chopping fine as sand, she sprinkled into a serving of stew. Each day her ingenuity was tested: there were spiders to bake, a lizard to fry, a buzzard’s breast to boil. Old Bonaparte ate several helpings of everything. With a restless glittering her eyes followed Ottilie as she watched for some sign that the spell was taking hold. You don’t look well, Ottilie, she said, mixing a little molasses in the vinegar of her voice. You eat like an ant: here now, why don’t you have a bowl of this good soup?

Because, answered Ottilie, evenly, I don’t like buzzard in my soup; or spiders in my bread, snakes in the stew: I have no appetite for such things. Old Bonaparte understood; with swelling veins and a stricken, powerless tongue, she rose shakily to her feet, then crashed across the table. Before nightfall she was dead.

Truman Capote, 'House of Flowers'

Dinner at Squillace, birthplace of Cassiodorus: Thursday's food quotation

The meal came with no delay. First, a dish of great peperoni cut up in oil. This gorgeous fruit is never much to my taste, but I had as yet eaten no such peperoni as those of Squillace; an hour or two afterwards my mouth was still burning from the heat of a few morsels to which I was constrained by hunger. Next appeared a dish for which I had covenanted -- the only food, indeed, which the people had been able to offer at short notice -- a stew of pork and potatoes. Pork (maiale ) is the staple meat of all this region ... but the pork of Squillace defeated me; it smelt abominably, and it was as tough as leather. No eggs were to be had, no macaroni; cheese, yes -- the familiar caccio cavallo. And the drink! At least I might hope to solace myself with an honest draught of red wine. I poured from the thick decanter (dirtier vessel was never seen on table) and tasted. The stuff was poison. assuredly i am far from fastidious; this was the only occasion when wine has been offered me in italy which I could not drink.

1901 George Gissing, By the Ionian Sea chapter 14

Dinner in Soho (not SoHo): Wednesday's food quotation

They dined in Soho ... Philip sent the waiter for a bottle of Burgundy from the neighbouring tavern, and they had a potage aux herbes, a steak from the window aux pommes, and an omelette au kirsch .

1915 W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage chapter 60

Chocolate malt or ice-cream? Tuesday's food quotation

I had crossed the road to avoid the milk bar where at this time of day Phuong had her chocolate malt. Two young American girls sat at the next table, neat and clean in the heat, scooping up ice cream.

1956 Graham Greene, The Quiet American part 3 chapter 2

Blueberry pancake: Monday's food quotation

I found Bisquick and frozen blueberries and some low-fat cottage cheese ... I poured a cup of the blueberries into a little bowl and covered them with water, then found a larger bowl and made a batter with the Bisquick and the cottage cheese and some nonfat milk. I sprayed the pan with butter-flavored Pam, then put it on a medium fire ... I drained the blueberries and was mixing them in the batter ... I increased the heat under the pan, then spooned in four equal amounts of batter, making sure each pancake had a like number of berries. I made the batter dry so the cakes would be thick and fluffy ... I adjusted the heat down. When they're thick like that you have to be careful with the heat, hot at first to set the cake and keep it from spreading, then low so it will cook through without burning ... When the pancakes were done we heaped them with sliced bananas and maple syrup.

1995 Robert Crais, Voodoo River chapter 23

Treatment for a scald: Sunday's quotation

'I ha' scalded my leg ... run for some creame and sallad oyle.' ...
''Tis but a blister ... I'le take it away with the white of an egg, a little honey, and hogs grease.'

1631 Ben Jonson, Bartholmew Fair act 2 scene 5

Archive of prescriptions

Breakfast at Ville Platte, Louisiana: Saturday's food quotation

'You wan' some breakfast, sugah?'
'How about a couple of hard poached eggs, toast, and grits?'
'Wheat or white?'
'Wheat.' ...
When the waitress brought the food, I said, 'Mm-mm, that coffee's some kinda strong!'
She said, 'Uh-huh.'
I smushed the eggs into the grits and mixed in a little butter and ate it between bits of the toast. The grits were warm and smooth and made the awful coffee easier to drink.

1995 Robert Crais, Voodoo River chapter 6

Venison pasty: Friday's food quotation

Come, we have a hot venison pasty to dinner.

1602 Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor act 1 scene 1

Bouillabaisse: Thursday's food quotation

This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is --
A sort of soup, or broth, or brew,
Or hotchpotch of all sorts of fishes,
That Greenwich never could outdo;
Green herbs, red peppers, muscles, saffron,
Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace;
All these you eat at Terré's tavern,
In that one dish of Bouillabaisse.

1855 W. M. Thackeray (noted from foodreference.com)

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Dinner at Great Bend: Wednesday's food quotation

The travellers stopped for dinner at a restaurant in Great Bend. Perry, down to his last fifteen dollars, was ready to settle for root beer and a sandwich, but Dick said no, they needed a solid 'tuck-in', and never mind the cost, the tab was his. They ordered two steaks medium rare, baked potatoes, French fries, fried onions, succotash, side dishes of macaroni and hominy, salad with Thousand Island dressing, cinnamon rolls, apple-pie and ice-cream, and coffee.

1966 Truman Capote, In Cold Blood p. 51 Penguin

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