• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 485 0

the descriptions in the brown notebook—the dinner book, we called it—became longer and more detailed: who sat where, what was drunk, some memorable things said. The notebook ran out of pages. There was another and then a third. They became a kind of archive, stories otherwise forgotten, couples that had parted, familiar names, others hard to place. The framed mirror had a long scorched section on one side. In the middle of a dinner and impassioned conversation one night, someone happened to remark, “I think your house is on fire.” A candle had collapsed and was leaning against the wall, which was burning. We put it out and went on with the meal.

That had been noted in the dinner book. Dinner when someone, in need of a little fresh air, went out and was discovered an hour later, sleeping on the woodpile. The night a wild woman threw the roast beef onto the floor, pronouncing it inedible. There were also great successes, but in any case, we were always writing things down, not just things that happened but also from books we were reading, things of interest, bits of history, opinions, occurrences, odd facts. At breakfast—tea and oranges for a period, as in Leonard Cohen’s beautiful song—we read aloud to one another and often leafed through cookbooks, deciding what to make for a party or simply at the end of the day. Life never felt richer.

Could any of this be put down in words and, if so, in what form? We began to imagine something for the kitchen, or even the bedside table, a book that could be opened at random or read day by day, like a diary or collection of letters, intimate, perhaps ending up with coffee stains or underlinings on certain pages.

In 1999 we mentioned the idea of a book to Nicholas Callaway, a young publisher and friend with whom we had sometimes dined. He liked the description and, coincidentally had even been gathering guidebooks and travel books, most of them rare, that for him had a similar appeal.

For us, over the years, cooking had evolved, and though it was still done together, it was more on the lines of, you do the salad, I’ll do the tart. We wrote this book the same way, not side by side but with an agreed idea of what it would be, and then both editing what we each had done. Nicholas Callaway was not quite as young by the time it was finished. There was research, travel, much more to writing it than we had anticipated.

We put the book together not to be definitive but rather to appeal to those for whom eating is something more than a mere necessity. It’s not meant to replace favorite cookbooks but instead, in a way, to complement them, to give them further context and, in the course of doing it, to give a year, perhaps more, of pleasure. If there are any inaccuracies, feel free to amend them in your own hand on the page. If there should be improvements or changes in recipes, do the same. We hope the book will be used as well as read. Life is many things, and among the best of them, it is meals.

MEALS ARE EVERYTHING · EIFFEL TOWER

DINNER WITH LORD BYRON · COFFEE

TWELFTH NIGHT · SALT

RUTH CLEVELAND · IMPORTANCE OF MEALS

CREAMED CHIPPED BEEF · TALLEYRAND · PINEAPPLE

WOMEN AT TABLE · FORKS · CORDON BLEU

GIVING A DINNER PARTY I

GIVING A DINNER PARTY II

GIVING A DINNER PARTY III

GIVING A DINNER PARTY IV

GIVING A DINNER PARTY V

GIVING A DINNER PARTY VI

JORIE GRAHAM ON LOVE · NEVER TOGETHER

GRAND DICTIONNAIRE DE CUISINE · AL DENTE

APHRODISIACS · JASON EPSTEIN’S KITCHEN

COOKBOOKS · DE GONCOURT

SPAGHETTI ALLA CARBONARA

WINE · WHAT WITH WHAT

MEALS ARE EVERYTHING

The meal is the essential act of life. It is the habitual ceremony, the long record of marriage, the school for behavior, the prelude to love. Among all peoples and in all times, every significant event in life—be it wedding, triumph, or birth—is marked by a meal or the sharing of food or drink. The meal is the emblem of civilization. What would one know of life as it should be lived or nights as they should be spent apart from meals?

EIFFEL TOWER

The Eiffel Tower was intended to stand for only twenty years