Hemingway’s rabbit stew
I will never forget the smell of stews in my house as a child, and Hemingway does an incredible job of capturing this. He shows the power of food…
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Category: Recipes
Mr. Woodhouse’s gruel
Mr. Woodhouse’s gruel is delicious, simple and nourishing, but it uses more decadent ingredients than Oliver Twist had in the workhouse. As a hypochondriac, Mr. Woodhouse might have preferred the bland version, but this recipe shows a more common dish eaten by the wealthy and middle classes of the period…
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Negus from the Mansfield Park ball
Negus isn’t your usual mulled wine. It’s far superior. Negus is best done nice and slow. That way you can coax all the flavor out of your aromatics and create a true depth of flavor…
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Charles Dickens Part 2: gruel
To make gruel, I took the basic ingredients that the workhouse would have on any given day and made the cheapest but tastiest soup possible…
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Louisa May Alcott Post 3: Thanksgiving feast
Thanksgiving turkey gets a bad knock for being dry, but this isn’t true. Turkey is a lean, flavorful meat that isn’t dry unless cooked improperly…
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Louisa May Alcott Post 2: plum pudding
Just like Thanksgiving, the history of plum pudding is anything but straightforward. It’s the cake of legends, some based in truth, others apocryphal…
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Hilary Mantel Part 2: soul cakes
With apples, pears, plenty of spice and sherry, soul cakes embody autumn. Spicy and fresh, I can’t get enough of these with tea…
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Washington Irving Part 3: pigeon pie
There are so many great food references in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow that I was torn on this one, but I love squab so really had to go with pigeon pie…
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Washington Irving Part 2: oily koek
Oily koek are a precursor to that delicious American classic, the doughnut, and the first recipe appears in 1667 in a Dutch cookbook, De verstandige kock…
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Dante Alighieri Part 2: apple five ways
When I first saw this quote, two things stuck out: freshness and aroma. You can do a lot with these recipes as snacks, desserts or just great sides…
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Mario Puzo Part 4: sausage and peppers
To wrap up our posts on Mario Puzo’s masterpiece, The Fortunate Pilgrim, we thought we’d share our grandma’s classic recipe for sausage and peppers…
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Mario Puzo Part 3: pasta e fagioli
Pasta fazool! Little gives me as much pleasure as pasta fazool. This recipe is great because it can vary in time and effort but is always delicious…
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We’re a sibling chef and bibliophile team bringing the food and book worlds together through literature’s best dishes.
