Here Let Us Feast: A Book of Banquets

M.F.K. Fisher is our host for the potluck of the ages, and there could be no better. The celebrated author of such books as The Art of Eating, Cooking of Provincial France, and With Bold Knife and Fork knows how to prepare a feast of reading as no other. She has extended her invitations with the utmost care (and she has refined the list in this revised edition of her 1946 classic): Charles Lamb roasts us a pig; Tobias Smollett boils a goose and serves it up in a sauce of pepper, lovage, coriander, mint, rue, anchovies, and oil; Lewis Carroll can be depended on for some unusual tea. And of course there will be those with a flair for the dramatic, such as Petronius Arbiter, with his dormice seasoned with honey and poppy-seed, his signs-of-the-Zodiac sampler, and his pastry thrushes stuffed with raisins and walnuts. These are but a few of her illustrious guests. Mrs. Fisher has arranged everything perfectly, and the result is a succession of unforgettable courses that will entice the most reluctant epicure.