Serve It Forth

This collection of entertaining anecdotes includes the abuses of the potato and how it can be dignified, social status relative to one's appreciation of vegetables, and the growth of the art of eating in ancient Greece and Rome.

In" Serve It Forth," her first book, M. F. K. Fisher takes readers on an animated journey through culinary history, beginning with the honey-loving Greeks and the immoderate Romans. Fisher recalls a hunt for snails and truffles with one of the last adepts in that art and recounts how Catherine de Medici, lonely for home cooking, touched off a culinary revolution by bringing Italian chefs to France. Each essay makes clear the absolute firmness of Fisher's taste--contrarian and unique--and her skill at stirring memory and imagination into a potent brew.