Julian Barnes is the author of numerous novels (Flaubert’s Parrot is the best known), but my favorite book of his is The Pedant in the Kitchen a very sympathetic and very funny book of essays about his trials and tribulations as a home cook and his—he feels—nerdy, profoundly human reliance on recipes (“Non-pedants frequently misunderstand pedants and are inclined to adopt a tone of superiority. ‘Oh, I don’t follow recipes,’ they will say, as if cooking from a text were like making love with a sex-manual open at your elbow. Or: ‘I read recipes, but only to get ideas.’ Well, fine, but let me ask you this: would you use a lawyer who said ‘Oh, I glance at a few statutes, but only to get ideas’?”). Here, he mentions a quote from novelist Joseph Conrad which appears earlier in the essay (turns out Mrs. Heart of Darkness wrote a cookbook!), “Good cooking is a moral agent.”
That’s what it’s about. You choose a loaf. You are reckless with the butter. You reduce the kitchen to chaos. You try not to waste scraps. You feed your friends and family. You sit around a table engaged in the irreducible social act of sharing food with others. For all the cavils and caveats, Conrad was right. It is a moral act. It is an affair of sanity. Let him have the last word. “The intimate influence of conscientious cookery,” he wrote, “promotes serenity of mind, the graciousness of thought, and that indulgent view of our neighbour’s failings which is the only genuine form of reverence. Those are its titles to our reverence.”
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Eating For Beginners 