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was totally absorbed in the business of the moment.” He ate with a gusto that could disgust onlookers, but he was nevertheless much sought after as a dinner guest for his incomparable conversation. Of the food he was wolfing down, he said, “I, who dine at a variety of good tables, am a much better judge of cooking than a person who has a very good cook but dines mostly at home. His taste is gradually adapted to the taste of his cook, but by trying a wider range, I can more accurately judge.”

MICROWAVE

On this day in 1999, Dr. Percy Spencer, an electronics expert, was inducted posthumously into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, whose previous honorees included the Wright brothers and Thomas Edison. His reputation rested mainly on his invention of the microwave oven, which grew out of research on radar after World War II. Standing near a magnetron, Spencer realized that chocolate candy in his pocket was melting. To confirm the magnetron’s heating ability, he placed popcorn kernels nearby and watched them explode.

The first microwave oven in 1947 weighed 750 pounds, was as big as a refrigerator, and was used only in restaurants, but over the following decades it was made much smaller and more versatile.

MUSSELS

This day in 1902 was the birthday of American tin tycoon William B. Leeds, a regular at Maxim’s in Paris, who was so fond of the rich mussel soup served there that it was renamed for him: billi-bi.

Called “the poor man’s oyster” because of their abundance and reasonable price, mussels have been cultivated for more than eight centuries and eaten for thousands of years before that. They are more popular in Europe than in the United States.

BILLI-BI

6 or so quarts unshelled mussels

12 tablespoons chopped onions and shallots

4 tablespoons chopped parsley, plus more for garnish

4 tablespoons butter

1 cup white wine

1 bay leaf

1 teaspoon dried thyme

Salt

Pepper

½ cup cream

Steam the mussels in a deep pot with all the other ingredients. Discard shells that don’t open after about ten minutes of steaming. Remove the mussels from the opened shells and keep warm. Meanwhile, strain and reduce the broth, then thicken it with the cream. Add the mussels to the broth and heat just through. Serve topped with more parsley. Serves six to eight.

E PLURIBUS UNUM

History says that Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson together proposed E pluribus unum, “out of many, one,” as the official motto of the newly formed United States. It is thought by some, however, that Franklin, with characteristic whimsy, had borrowed the phrase from a traditional recipe for salad dressing.

CHÂTEAU

“Château” in the name of a French wine usually means it is a Bordeaux. The image of a large estate with a great house or castle is sometimes correct, but there are important wine-growing estates without a fine house.

There are often grand names attached to mediocre wines and simple names for great ones. Among the latter are wines like Château Ausone, Château Latour, Château Lafite, and Château Pétrus.

A small number of Burgundies and other wines also have a “Château” in their names, such as Château de Beaucastel (Rhône), Château Fortia (Rhône), Château Fuisse (Burgundy), Château du Nozet (Loire), and Château Vignelaure (Provence), as well as Châteauneuf-du-Pape, the famous, huge denomination near Avignon covering more than eight thousand acres with many growers, the best of whom produce very fine wine—dark, powerful, and long-lived.

HOW TO BECOME A REGULAR

It’s pleasant being a regular at a restaurant—recognized at the door, greeted, and treated with obvious consideration. How do you qualify? Owners and waiters say there are ways of going about it:

• You don’t have to show up every week. Three or four reasonably close visits are usually enough.

• Loyalty is more important than frequency. If you travel to other cities and go to the same restaurant at least once each time, even if it is only twice a year, you often make the grade.

• Spending money is infallible,