In Good Taste: Rethinking American History with Our Palates

Good food writing can make the mouth water, the nose tingle, and the stomach growl. It invites readers to reconstruct a dish or a meal so that they may reflect on or imagine its taste, flavor, and texture. M. F. K. Fisher is probably the best known of the literary gourmands who helped spark gustatory imaginations and linked words to taste. In her book An Alphabet for Gourmets, she evokes the essence of a pea. “I watched the headwaiter, as skilled as a magician, dry peas over a flame in a generous pan, add what looked like an equal weight of butter, which almost visibly sent out a cloud of sweet-smelling hay and meadow air.” In describing her own perfect garden peas she wrote, Small brown roasted chickens, the best ones I have ever eaten, done for me that afternoon … and not chilled since but cooled in their own intangibly delicate juices. There was salad of mountain lettuces. There was honest bread. … But what really mattered, what piped the high unforgettable tune of perfection, were the peas, which came from their hot pot onto our thick china plates in a cloud, a kind of miasma, of everything anyone could ever want from them, even in a dream.1