The Chicken-and-Egg Problem - Food in Literature

Has the fad of lists created our awareness of food in literature or have great writers always known the importance of describing foods? Sifting through information online, it looks as though good writing has dollops of food descriptions.

There is no dearth of food quotes from Shakespeare. There are lists of these all over the Internet.

The eggplant and peach emoji are standard code for racy thoughts these days, but people have been using food as sexual innuendo for centuries. Shakespeare was a pro at the gastronomic double entendre.

How The Bard Used Food As Racy Code

In a most enticing post, Maria Popova of Brain Pickings arranges a wholesome spread of examples where great writers have used descriptions of food.

   Food and literature have a long and arduous relationship, ... But nowhere does that relationship come alive more vividly and enchantingly than in Fictitious Dishes: An Album of Literature’s Most Memorable Meals  — an ingenious project by designer and writer Dinah Fried, who cooks, art-directs, and photographs meals from nearly two centuries of famous fiction.

From James Joyce to Maurice Sendak

The article is mouth-wateringly illustrated, comprehensive and rewarding in many more ways. It speaks of Ray Bradbury and Scott Fitzgerald, of Heidi and Moby Dick and others. And for each name there is an elegant and drool-worthy picture as well as well-chosen quotes and extracts.   

Another piece is ungarnished by pictures but hearty in content:

There are three ways in which writers can deal with food within their work. Firstly, food can be totally ignored. This approach is sometimes taken despite food being such a standard feature of storytelling that its absence, be it a lonely meal at home, elegant canapés at an impressively catered cocktail party, or a cheap sandwich collected from a local café, is an obvious omission. Food can also add realism to a story, with many authors putting as much effort into conjuring the smell, taste, and texture of food as they do into providing a backstory and a purpose for their characters. In recent years, a third way has emerged with some writers placing such importance upon food in fiction that the line that divides the cookbook and the novel has become distorted.

Cooking in the Books: Cookbooks and Cookery in Popular Fiction

The article brings up quite a few books that are new to me and I hope it will stimulate you to try one of them:

Ginny Selvaggio is struggling to cope with the death of her parents and the friends and relations who crowd her home after the funeral. ... Ginny retreats to the kitchen.

The article also tells us about

Australian author Kerry Greenwood. Food features within her famed Phryne Fisher Series with recipes included in A Question of Death (2007). Recipes also form part of Greenwood’s food-themed collection of short crime stories Recipes for Crime (1995), written with Jenny Pausacker. These nine stories, each one imitating the style of one of crime fiction’s greatest contributors (from Agatha Christie to Raymond Chandler), allow readers to simultaneously access mysteries and recipes.

When the central protagonist is being questioned by police, Clare Cosi’s answers are interrupted by a flashback scene and instructions on how to make Greek coffee

Cooking in the Books: Cookbooks and Cookery in Popular Fiction also introduces us to 

Julie Hyzy’s White House Chef Mystery novels, the cover of each volume in the series boasts that it “includes Recipes for a Complete Presidential Menu!” These menus, with detailed ingredients lists, instructions for cooking and options for serving, are segregated from the stories and appear at the end of each work

As people exchange recipes in reality, so too do fictional characters. The Recipe Club (2009), by Andrea Israel and Nancy Garfinkel, is the story of two friends, Lilly Stone and Valerie Rudman, which is structured as an epistolary novel.

While Cooking in the Books: Cookbooks and Cookery in Popular Fiction did not focus on works of great literary works, it was important to re-introduce the more comfortable kind of novels that most people read and enjoy. After all, it is only tomorrows which can sift through the chaff. 

To return to our theme, there is a short piece, Food in Fiction: Hot Peas and Vinegar in ‘Two Gallants’, that focuses on James Joyce.

And we round that filling meal with a very academic look at Dahl and food:

This study considers debates related to food issues from the period in which Dahl was writing as well as the influence of children’s texts from a wide range of genres, including folk tales and fantasy literature, on food’s function in Dahl’s children’s fiction. 

Food and Power in RoaldDahl’s Children’s Fiction 

While individuals do their bit to preserve the best for us, sometimes, nations undertake the task: Canadian Literary Fare has "Literary Bites: Appetizing Reading Suggestions" and many other sections which deal deliciously with food and literature. What a marvellous enterprise!

After all these feasts, we return to a more basic mode. The next post offers a review of a translated work.

Currying Favour? Flavours in Indian Diaspora Writings

Identity and food are closely linked and it is only natural that food flavour the fiction of the Indian diaspora. 

Naben Ruthnum explores issues that spice such writings:

he criticizes the overreliance of South Asian food writing on domesticity, authenticity and nostalgia while simultaneously recounting his own experiences learning to cook Mauritian food – careful to explain that he did it out of "self-sufficiency," not some misguided attempt to understand his culture.

Issues of Identity in Food and Fiction

While I've not read The Mistress of Spices, given my experience with another novel of hers, I'd imagine it will serve as an example of Ruthnam's line of thought. It does sound appetising, though:

“Each spice has a special day to it. For turmeric it is Sunday, when light drips fat and butter-colored into the bins to be soaked up glowing, when you pray to the nine planets for love and luck.”

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress of Spices

This quote is abundant on the Net. As for the rest, one particular review of the book seems to dominate to the exclusion of others:

Tilo, an immigrant from India, runs an Indian spice shop in Oakland, California. While she dispenses the classic ingredients for curries and kormas, she also helps her customers to gain a more precious commodity: whatever they most desire. For Tilo is a Mistress of Spices, a priestess of the secret, magical powers of spices. 

Goodreads Description 

This blogger's tastes apart, it is a popular novel and even has a film to its credit.

Featured on the menu today, we also have a novel by Indian-Canadian Jaspreet Singh:

Chef Kishen proves to be a culinary guide with an unexpected spiritual dimension. “Before cooking he would ask: Fish, what you like to become? Basil, where did you lose your heart? Lemon: it is not who you touch, but how you touch.” Unfortunately, the mentor-apprentice friendship is more lovingly described than the culinary atmosphere. Despite an elaborate array of ingredients, techniques and dishes, the associated sensory phenomena fail to be translated into evocative prose. “Chef” is a cold meal, with Kip at its gelid center.

Kitchen Comfort

Another review raves:

"there is a fantastic recipe for Rogan Josh on page 226".

Serendipity brings Mango and Masala: Food in the Immigrant Novel into my purview as I wonder what to do with a mango that is still rather sour but not unripe enough for use in a raw mango dish:

featuring food in order to perpetuate themes of “otherness,” exoticism, racial marginalization, or even nostalgia, should perhaps have limits. Critics, like Asian American cultural commentator Frank Chin, have panned writers who indulge in “food porn” and “who deliberately use a culinary idiom to anchor depictions of racialized life for Asian Americans.” Also, immigrant authors of South Asian origin have been charged with appealing to marketers and Western readers by using food clichés, like the mention of mango. Trying to lure readers with appetizing images and scenes of mango under the pretext of exuding South Asian authenticity might meet Chin’s criteria.

The article mentions only a few novels and Pastries: A Novel of Desserts and Discoveries was the only one of which I knew nothing.

The reviews are enticing:

Sunya Malhotra, seemingly average in all ways, shines in one area — baking. She is a pastry chef and owns Pastries Café, located in the Wallingford district of Seattle, Washington. Sunya has succeeded in creating a unique and innovative chocolate cake. "I orchestrated the usual items along with a few unexpected ones and flew into a creative frenzy," Sunya explains. "Thus was born … my signature creation: tender, multitiered, a subtle melding of complementary flavors and chili heat, graced with a silken bittersweet chocolate skin, more delicate than a regular chocolate cake but taller." Roger Yahura, her recently estranged Japanese fashion-designer-turned- political-activist boyfriend, describes the dessert as "a transcendental experience." And a gossipy, meat-and-potatoes food critic, Donald J. Smith, writes:

"Sunya Cake is tasty, beautiful, hypnotic, and lyrical. It’s an accomplishment perhaps only my mother could match. But my mother doesn’t have the secret recipe. Only Sunya Malhotra has it — and she isn’t telling."

 Bharti Kirchner serves up a treat with Pastries

And now for dessert - The Settler's Cookbook appears to live up to promise:

Here you'll discover how shepherd's pie is much enhanced by sprinkling in some chilli, Victoria sponge can be enlivened by saffron and lime, and the addition of ketchup to a curry can be life-changing ...

portobellobooks.com

The same link provides an excerpt as well. And, to go by another brief review, this is a tongue tickling read:

Alibhai-Brown intersperses the unvarnished story of her life with 100 recipes. 

independent.co.uk

I leave you with a video of what's for dinner here:

An Indian Thali of Food-laced Fiction

Sometimes descriptions of food and eating in literature can go on repeating themselves in one’s head like a stuck record. In my case, those unforgettable lines are from RK Narayan’s The Guide. ‘He had a craving for bonda, which he used to eat in the railway station stall when a man came there to vend his edibles on a wooden tray to the travellers. It was composed of flour, potato, a slice of onion, a coriander leaf, and a green chilli — and oh! how it tasted — although he probably fried it in anything; he was the sort of vendor who would not hesitate to fry a thing in kerosene, if it worked out cheaper. With all that, he made delicious stuff…’

Bonda babu

We open with this quote from an article by the author of the bestselling Mr. Majestic! Hari, a Hero for Hire and Tropical Detective as it focuses on R K Narayan, venerated in India for his writings. Also I love bondas. 

By Thamizhpparithi Maari (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

Alas, the only comprehensive article I could find, on the Net, of the sort required, was 4 Must-Read Fiction Books About Indian Food. 

The first book in the list appears a botched recipe so far as food in fiction goes

The cooking theme is a great concept so underdeveloped it is rendered meaningless. What a waste of sambar and spice. 

Amulya Malladi: Serving crazy with curry

However, another critic, though with similar thoughts about the food in the book, also has this to say:

the recipes (provided for the dishes Devi cooks) are interesting. I’m going to make Malladi’s apricot-ginger-mint chutney,  which I plan to have with baked brie.

Brown Paper

Another novel in the list is

a book-club-friendly story of a mother reconnecting with her family through traditional Indian cooking

Amit Majmudar's 'The Abundance' trades fake family happiness for something real

At the centre of the book is an unnamed Indian mother who makes dahi the traditional way, curdling each new pot of yogurt with a spoonful from the one before it. To ensure this “dynastic succession”, she smuggled some in a test-tube when she emigrated from Gujarat to Ohio. Now, with two grown children who have their own families, she “colonises [her] grandchildren with the magical cultures”. 

Comfort food

We also find an Anita Nair but it's a soup that does not spell a good rating as food in fiction:

Reviews always range from sweet to sour and Food fiction: Some high notes but Anita Nair's ‘Alphabet soup for lovers’ lacks depth of flavour has a tangy look at this popular name in Indian writing in English:

It’s all there, but in “Masterchef Australia” lingo, this soup fails to develop a beautiful depth of flavour!

And then there are many academic articles about food in Indian fiction. Between Fiction and Food, for instance, examines how

Gabriella Ferro-Luzzi describes the cultural uses of food in modern Tamil literature

I kind of squirm at this enterprise as it mostly delights in mores that are more or less defunct.

Indian food is so diverse that the fact is hard to comprehend for an outsider. it ranges from dishes which come close to the balti and butter chicken of European tastes to entire ranges of vegetarian or vegan food (seemingly, this peculiarity first took prominence in India). 

Also, in India, so many elaborate customs can govern all stages from preparation to eating that the whole exercise is quite mind boggling. Happily, or unfortunately, a lot of dross is being spooned off as the scum of time. Today, cuisine is less divisive - young Indians enjoy a global diversity of tastes in food.

And this holds good for fiction, as well. There are hordes of youngsters, across the sub-continent, munching through mountains of manga even as we nibble at the concept of food in fiction. And, since Japan plays Master Chef in the genre, it's a given that these young minds are drooling over food in manga. Almost every J dorama I watch pays homage to food in ways that are irresistible. Korea, too, has a rich tradition of flavouring fiction with food. But all that is for another post, someday.

As for us, we leap from the frying pan of food in Indian fiction to the fiery spices in fiction from persons of Indian origin. All diaspora carry recipes across continents as we have seen in the case of the Indian 'dahi' in one case above.

Crème de la Crime? Murder on the Menu

Food in crime fiction seems as natural as cinnamon in apple pie. There's always poison which needs to be camouflaged in food or drink. And, though they are never silly geese, many a detective is a gastronome and even a gourmand. 

My personal favourite is Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe. The obese detective almost never budges from his residence. He has a cook but is no stranger to the kitchen. 

The layout of his flat is a key piece in the pleasure of the series. There is the kitchen and there is the orchid room, his second hobby being these flowers. Detection is tertiary but relatively swift, once his hired pair of legs, Archie Goodwin, fetches him the various clues of the case.   

Stout uses food as a character in the books. It is every bit as alive, as filled with personality and appeal–visual and olfactory, color and taste as any witness, victim or villain.

Food in Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe Books

Wolfe is but one example. Poirot is more popular. However, they are all a bit of old hat and, I will eat mine if one of the newer ones, showcased below, don't please the palate as well. Food in crime fiction never stales, somehow.   

Anne Zouroudi's Red Herrings: Food in Crime Fiction is a nourishing essay on the subject. She authors the Greek detective series.

Don't read this one on an empty stomach! The extensive descriptions of various food and drink items will leave you wanting some. 

goodreads.com

However, crime fiction can also make us queasy about what's being served:

In her 1930 classic Strong Poison, Dorothy L Sayers had her heroine Harriet Vane stand trial for poisoning her ex-lover with a sweet omelette.

 Dining with death: crime fiction’s long affair with food

Recipes for crime fiction, we note, sometimes blend in food. What happens when we also fold in some romance? 

Recipes for Love and Murder, opens with Tannie Maria transforming her recipe column in the local newspaper into an advice column to pacify the paper’s sponsors. Her common sense (coupled with mouthwatering recipes) is a hit, and she soon receives mail from readers across the country. Then Tannie Maria gets a letter from a woman who wants to escape her abusive husband—a situation that mirrors her own violent past. When the woman is murdered, Tannie Maria is determined to find the killer herself. After all, suspects are more willing to talk if you ply them with food.

Sally Andrew Debuts a South African Mystery Series with Recipes for Love and Murder

These days it's never as simple as all that! You've got to watch every mouthful lest it go to waist!

Writer and columnist, Paige Nick, penned ‘Death by Carbs’ after a pasta-loving friend said she could kill the scientist for his low carbohydrate high fat (LCHF) ‘banting’ diet.

Banter’s book sees the death of Tim Noakes

Fiction, stewed in a cauldron of history, sups well with a side order of crime. The novel below sounds like a fine example of French crime cuisine.

I could go on and on about how Nicholas sounds good enough to eat, but really, Parot is obsessed with food. Crimes may be committed and deaths avenged, but Parot goes into great detail every time a morsel is mentioned. Sure, there may be a corpse two pages over, but dang, food is like another character in this riveting start to a fantastic mystery series.

5 Mouthwatering books that mix food with fiction

The next post serves up an Indian 'thali'. Either Google is doing this to me as I'm based in the sub-continent or we're sizzling with samples of food in crime fiction!

A Bite or Two of African Food Fiction

Our times are increasingly characterised by a taste for the new in food. Eating Italian, Indian or Chinese is already almost traditional around the world. Today, the list is growing with Mexican, Korean, and Lebanese gracing the menu in major cities. This trend finds an echo in fiction. 

Posts on this blog have explored how some flavours override others in fiction. In food, as in fiction, some cuisines are slow to surface into our collective consciousnesses. And this is not because of any quality inherent in them but rather an inertia in global media and in the art of existing search engines. Thus, African cuisine is a recent and hesitant entrant in metropolitan menus worldwide. Naturally, then, a search for food in African fiction reveals less than a sprinkle of names.

... what I found memorable about the novel was the collection of recipes it contained. Woven into the story are recipes written in the style of an incantation. I found this seemingly insignificant aspect of the novel powerfully evocative. That was when I first began thinking seriously about the place of food in African fiction.

 Food in African Fiction | 5 Novels About Love, Murder, and Memory 

Nnedi Okorafor often references the food that Sunny and the others consume throughout the book. Nigerian food is full of flavor and is often prepared with chili peppers and palm oil. Click here to learn more about Nigerian food. Akata Witch also offers an Leopard alternative to the popular Nigerian dish of pepper soup: Tainted pepper soup, made with peppers that grow near where magical brews are dumped out. Be careful though, if prepared incorrectly this soup will explode!

Explore the bewitching world of Akata Witch

Sadly, though I'm sure there is a lot of food fiction in Japan, for instance, given the J doramas where food plays central roles, I'm unable to bring any sushi to this table. 

So we drop the globe trotting and proceed to a who donut.

Fantasy Food in Science Fiction - A Bitter Pill?

Now that romance and erotica got the juices flowing, we introduce another flavour - science fiction:

The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth ... chronicles the creation of a substance called Herakleophorbia, by two men named Bensington and Redwood. Later dubbing their creation “Boomfood,” they soon discover that it can cause some animals and plants to grow to an enormous size.

Comparing H G Wells Book to Bert I Gordon's Film

Read for Free on Kindle

The Bert I. Gordon Film

Perhaps, Soylent Green is more memorable to some of us. 

The film was based on a book.

Set in New York, Make Room! Make Room! imagines a world where all natural resources are all but gone. The world is overcrowded. Water is rationed. Work is scarce. Those who can work are still incredibly poor, forced to share tiny rooms. Those who can’t work survive – just about – on benefits, often supplemented by crime. Food is almost always synthetic or manufactured from everything from seaweed to soya and lentils – which is where the name Soylent comes from.

Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison

Arthur C Clarke had one too, a little earlier. 

In the anthology, there is a short story called "The Food of the Gods". 

... in which human meat is presented as the most nutritious and most delicious food of all. The theory that man has evolved as he is because of cannibalism in the ancient past was also suggested.

Arthur C. Clarke and the De-Evolution of the Modern Cannibal Elites

Your absolute go-to for fantasy foods in science fiction works: Food in Science Fiction.

Upcoming posts offer a nourishing soup of food fiction from around Earth.

Flirting with Food in Fiction

We have seen how food moved from simply spicing up a story to a more sumptuous status. Food in fiction, today, has a larder full of themes, from romance and crime to science fiction and beyond. 

Romance makes a heady mix and can swing between light and frothy and hot and steamy.  

...ice cream and pie loving portrait photographer, Dan McDowell, (who) finds himself in a moment of existential crises...And the food throughline? Before, during, and everywhere along the way of Dan’s journey, he seeks the comfort of his favorite confections: home-baked pie and the toffee ice cream bars from his neighborhood ice cream truck. That motif is interwoven throughout the tale, often to hilarious effect, vaunting those simple food items into enduring emotional touchstones. By the time the unexpected and poignant conclusion is reached, readers just might find themselves yearning for a warm slice ala mode...and maybe taking sweeter notice of the jingling ice cream trucks wending its way down their own neighborhood streets.

The Food of Fiction: When Flavor Fits the Narrative

A delightful recipe for a romance read! 

When things get steamier, there's Food in Erotic Literature: 12 Examples to Make Your Mouth Water.

For me, reading ‘Comfort Food’ upon recommendation of fellow bloggers was somewhat similar to your friends suggesting you put a dollop of wasabi on your sushi if you’re never tried it before. You may very well say “but it’s green and it smells weird - are you sure I’ll like it?” and your friends all nod and say “yeah, it’s great! It’s like mustard. It’s Japanese mustard. It’s great.” Well that was kind of my reaction to ‘Comfort Food’. The novel was like wasabi, a literary shock to my senses... but not awful, and surprisingly sinus-clearing.

'Comfort Food' by Kitty THOMAS

... the title piece (which)tells the tale of a pregnant woman who discovers and succumbs to irresistible new cravings. Reader warning: Since this is erotica, some parts of the content are explicit.

Tales of erotica: A pleasant kind of heavy

In the context of romance and erotica, it is only fair to add that there also exists a small section of His and Hers - I've deliberately muddled the order as we need to shuffle and stir things frequently to prevent the fatal consequences of stickiness:

At only Rs. 76 on Kindle 

A TASTE OF HEAVEN is a 57,000 word short novel that includes a foodie romance, second chances, and a wee bit of haggis.

5 Women-fueled Foodie Fiction Treats Summer 2016

“He presses down a hissing hamburger with his spatula. He lays the split buns on the plate to toast and heat. He gathers up stray onions from the plate and heaps them on the meat and presses them in with the spatula. He puts half the bun on top of the meat, paints the other half with melted butter, with thin pickle relish. Holding the bun on the meat, he slips the spatula under the thin pad of meat, flips it over, lays the buttered half on top, and drops the hamburger on a small plate. Quarter of a dill pickle, two black olives beside the sandwich… And he scrapes his griddle with the spatula and looks moodily at the stew kettle.”

The 8 Manliest Meals in Novels, Ever

From a glance at food in children's books we graduated to a somewhat more adult look at the genre. Tomorrow's post examines the flavours that regional cultures bring to the table in food fiction from around the world.

Food Fiction - The Junior Taste Count

A book, for me, always went well with food. There is some close connect between the act of chewing a tasty morsel and that of reading. Fiction serves the best experience. And poetry at wine tastings is not unheard of.

If you ask me about food in fiction, I instantly recall that I could manage to up my son's appetite a notch, when he was feverish as a child, by reading a picnic scene from an Enid Blyton aloud to him. 

In fact, one must pay tribute to this talent of Blyton:

The food of Enid Blyton is often the first thing people remember about her books, and with good reason.
“A large ham sat on the table, and there were crusty loaves of new bread. Crisp lettuces, dewy and cool, and red radishes were side by side in a big glass dish, with great slabs of butter and jugs of creamy milk…”

The Food of Enid Blyton

“There were great chunks of new-made cream cheese, potted meat, ripe tomatoes grown in Mrs Lucy’s brother’s greenhouse, gingerbread cake fresh from the oven, shortbread, a great fruit cake with almonds crowding the top, biscuits of all kinds, and six jam sandwiches!”

A peek into an Enid Blyton larder

This page rocks as food porn:

"A large ham sat on the table, and there were crusty loaves of new bread. Crisp lettuces, dewy and cool, and red radishes were side by side in a big glass dish, great slabs of butter and jugs of creamy milk" – Five Go Off in a Caravan.

11 Enid Blyton things I wish I could eat right now

Simply put:

“You can’t have adventures on an empty stomach,” reasoned Dick.

The Five Famous Foods of Enid Blyton that I Want to Eat

 “Lettuce, tomatoes, onions, radishes, mustard and cress, carrot grated up – that is carrot, isn’t it, Mrs. Penruthlan?” said Dick. “And lashings of hard-boiled eggs.” There was an enormous tureen of new potatoes, all gleaming with melted butter, scattered with parsley. There was a big bottle of home-made salad cream. “Look at that cream cheese, too,” marvelled Dick, quite overcome. “And that fruit cake. And are those drop-scones, or what? Are we supposed to have something of everything, Mrs Penruthlan?”

How to devour Enid Blyton for breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner

A prominent section of the intersect between food and fiction lies in the children's department:

What's Cooking? Food-Infused Fiction for Kids

9 Best Children's Books About Food - a nice write-up with pretty pictures

C.S. Lewis’s Greatest Fiction Was Convincing American Kids That They Would Like Turkish Delight

The first chapter explores animal welfare and meat and the power dynamics between humans and animals in The Magic Finger (1966), Danny the Champion of the World (1975), and Fantastic Mr Fox (1970). Sweets and the notion of cautionary consumption form the focus of the second chapter, which will examine Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), Boy (1984) and The Witches (1983). The third chapter considers the effects of convenience food on mealtimes and notions of proper consumption in The Twits (1980), The BFG (1982), and Matilda (1988). The thesis concludes with an analysis of the representation of futuristic foods in James and the Giant Peach (1961), George’s Marvellous Medicine (1981) and Willy Wonka’s factory in Chocolate Factory and Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (1972).

Food and Power in RoaldDahl’s Children’s Fiction

Be it Seuss and his Green Eggs and Ham or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, there exist lashings of food fiction for the young. 

However, children grow up and grown-ups also need feeding. Tomorrow, we shall sample the various themes in food fiction for the adult. 

From Food in Fiction to Food as Fiction

Food spices literature. This was its traditional place in writings. However, today, there are whole novels where food is more important than the protagonist. 

The importance of the theme/genre is evident from the act of categorizing that is rapidly infusing food fiction:

5 Mouthwatering books that mix food with fiction

Some of the books have movie versions. 

Naturally, these lists often overlap in their offerings. Nevertheless, each list is from a different angle and such efforts require our appreciation. 

100 MUST-READ BOOKS: FOOD IN FICTION

A movie of the book exists

Things to eat or drink, in stories, take on added charm. It really does not matter if one has not tasted the specific morsel or beverage mentioned. The reader can even relish foods which might be forbidden in their culture. 

10 Great Novels for Food Lovers

An excellent write up with 'tasty excerpts'

Food fiction, like crime and romance, lends itself with ease to movie versions 

But what can we say after scanning these lists: is food fiction a genre or a theme? I would tend to surmise that, once upon a time it was a theme - the addition of a food scene or two would certainly be an ace up a writer's sleeve, given that food is a major preoccupation for most of us. However, with time, and given the demand created by the peculiar constraints of content writing, there have emerged novels where food is the centrepiece.


An article on kitchn.com provides a nice taste of who's who and what's what in this exploration 

 .. there are also shelves of crime fiction that often incorporate food-related puns (Crime Brûlée, Devil's Food Cake Murder, Beef Stolen-Off) and chick-lit titles whose protagonist usually owns a bakery/cupcake shop/catering company but still has time to look gorgeous and meet cute (but difficult and elusive) men.

... There are also novels where the protagonist is a chef, novels about Chinese food, and novels where the heroine goes to Paris and eats a lot of delicious-sounding things.

Novels, with Food