The delicious food writings of five and a half famous writers* who loved to cook

We all love a good nosh up. It should come as no surprise that some of history’s finest writers had a taste for food writing too. Take Oscar Wilde. The man renowned for his rapier-sharp wit famously wrote in A Woman of No Importance: “After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.” Sadly, Oscar’s dalliance with food never went further than a few lines. However, there are some other literary greats who put a whole lot more effort into showcasing their culinary passions.

Alexandre Dumas

Most well-known for The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas was also a cook and a gourmet. He wrote Dictionnaire de Cuisine, published posthumously in 1873. It is a compendium of French dining habits through history. The volume was unabashedly inaccurate. Dumas included unbelievable food tales such as the claim that Romans drove ducks across the Alps for dinner and that people in the Caribbean fed exclusively on crab.

In a letter to a friend, Dumas wrote: “It is my habit each week to dine at restaurants three times, take dinner at the homes of friends twice, dine alone at home once, and to entertain five or six at home every Tuesday.” He was noted for the salads he served. The Alexandre Dumas potato salad recipe is revived in the James Beard cookbook and is surprisingly easy to make.

Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath, author of The Bell Jar, is best known for her confessional poetry. Her dark poems seemed ultimately overshadowed by her choice of death via an oven. Ironically, she was quoted as having exclaimed: “How I love to cook!” Baking was especially therapeutic to her. Some of her recipes still ghost the web, such as tomato soup cake or lemon pudding cake.

She also loved reading cookbooks. She particularly enjoyed Irma Rombauer’s The Joy of Cooking, considered a bible in culinary echelons. She struggled with the tensions between domesticity and the literary life. She described it as “a life of oppositions, balancing children, sonnets, life and dirty dishes.” Her first essay, sold to The Christian Science Monitor, was entitled “Kitchen of the Fig Tree.” It recalled the three kitchens she had cooked in since her marriage: Spain, Cambridge and then Boston. Interestingly, she spent the most time describing the views from the kitchens and her gaze outward, not the food.

Ernest Hemingway

A Moveable Feast enters every food writer’s lexicon early. Papa’s recipe for pan-fried hamburgers is ubiquitous. It has been featured in Saveur, The Paris Review and Esquire. The recipe had over a dozen ingredients and included Mei Yen powder, which is MSG. His recipe for bacon-wrapped trout is a must-try for camping and fly-fishing aficionados. Similar to his sparse writing style, his way of fly-fishing was simple and rustic. He caught grasshoppers with his bare hands as bait and kept them in a bottle strung around his neck.

A Moveable Feast provides saturnine anecdotes about Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It also offers a glimpse into young Hemingway at 25 as a starving artist. He wrote about hunger in Paris, where the walk was filled with smells from bakeries. Hunger was omnipresent. The artist in him cultivated it as discipline. He noted that all the paintings in the Luxembourg museum were sharpened and clearer if you were belly-empty and hollow-hungry.

Isabel Allende

We know her best for Stories of Eva Luna and The House of the Spirits. This Chilean-American writer also wrote Aphrodite, a feast of facts about the aphrodisiac powers of food and love. It catalogues all manner of aphrodisiacs from stingrays to cow’s udders, mushrooms and various spices. It contains a treasure trove of recipes. The recipe for gazpacho from Allende’s book is excellent.

What does Allende like to cook at home? According to Aphrodite, if she were to host an orgy, Allende would offer guests platters of raw and cooked shellfish, meat, game birds, cold fish, salads, sweets and fruits. Grapes are a priority. A recipe for curanto is offered to aid such endeavours.

Nikolai Gogol

The author of Dead Souls paid significant attention to food. He loved to eat and often ordered another meal right after finishing one. He also loved to cook. In Italy, he learned to make Italian-style macaroni. He was said to churn his own butter and loved rich dairy products. His favourite was boiled goat’s milk with rum. Paradoxically, Gogol was plagued by severe digestive problems all his life. Manifestations of intestinal discomfort affect a number of characters in Dead Souls, usually after overeating. Nabokov commented that the belly is the belle of his stories and the nose is their beau. When Gogol died, doctors discovered his stomach was so shrunken they could feel his backbone. Seven leeches resided in his nasal passage.

David Foster Wallace

“Consider the Lobster” is a significant food essay. Assigned to cover the Maine Lobster Festival, DFW describes the spectacle of lobster dishes and products with a caustic eye. You learn that lobsters are basically sea-bugs. In the 1800s, lobsters were considered low-class food. Feeding lobsters more than once a week to prisoners was considered cruel and unusual. The lobster is now a luxe dining item. The festival seeks to democratise the lobster. DFW’s list of petty inconveniences feels like a commentary on the indignities of proletarianism.

Foodies cite this essay often. It was first published in Gourmet magazine. The essay argues that lobsters feel pain when boiled. It raises uncomfortable questions surrounding the morality of food and the way we kill for it. This should give foodies pause.

Did DFW like to cook? It is unlikely. He died young and struggled with depression. But his philosophical voice is nonpareil. He could pick any topic and make it worth following.