Books and My Food: Literary Quotations and Recipes for Every Year

by Elisabeth Luther Cary, Annie M. Jones, David E. Schoonover (Foreword)

In her preface to the 1904 Books and My Food, reissued for the first time in facsimile, the American literary and art critic Elisabeth Luther Cary declares that it is “impossible to read English novels without realizing how important a part food plays in the mental as in the physical life of the Englishman.” This appealing literary/culinary daybook provides 365 recipes along with literary quotations that prompted their creation.

Beginning on January 1 with a recipe for traditional English wedding cake referenced to Jane Austen's Emma and ending on December 31 with a recipe for wassail attributed to none other than Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Books and My Food provides readers the occasion to experience the gastronomic delights that inspired novelists, poets, and playwrights.

Drawn almost entirely from British sources, the literary catalyst for these recipes include citations from Charlotte Brontë, William Shakespeare, William Makepeace Thackeray, Ben Jonson, George Eliot, Alfred Tennyson, and others. Recipes range from across familiar British fare from mutton chops, leg of lamb, and meat pies to teas cakes, custards, puddings, porridge, and crumpets. Equally intriguing are the instructions for more obscure sustenance such as rum omelets, sago-cream pudding, Shrovetide pancakes, furmety, syllabub, dulcet creams, and an adaptation for curds and whey. Finally, for the literary buff whose tastes run bravely to the authentic dinners of old England, there are recipes for tongue and spinach, frog leg patties, fried eels, and stewed snipe.

Genres: Cooking

262 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1904

About the author

Elisabeth Luther Cary (May 18, 1867 – July 13, 1936) was an American writer and art critic.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, she was the daughter of Edward and Elisabeth (Luther) Cary. Her father was editor of the Brooklyn Union and later became a New York Times editorial writer. Elisabeth was privately educated and from 1885–1898 she studied art. From 1893–1895, she translated three novels from French. In the years that followed she published a series of studies on prominent literary figures. In 1904, she collaborated with Annie M. Jones to produce a book of recipes inspired by quotes from famous literary figures titled, Books and My Food. She began publishing a monthly small art magazine called The Scrip in 1905.

In 1908, she was named the first full-time art critic for the New York Times, where she worked for the next twenty five years. Following World War I, she helped encourage the founding of industrial arts schools and the introduction of machinery into the studio. After living in Brooklyn her entire life, she died of heat exhaustion in 1936. She was buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Brooklyn

Reviews

[Terri]

Fun to read.

[AnnMarie Willems · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paid too much for my copy, but I love it none the less.