Good food and good literature often go hand in hand, as readers of Winnie-the-Pooh, the Little House books, and the Redwall books know.
Good food and good literature often go hand in hand.
S ourdough has been enjoying quite the moment. Accelerated (it would seem) by the pandemic, the trend has people experimenting with ratios, flour types, hydration levels, and decorative scoring techniques. Before sourdough was cool, however, Laura Ingalls was teaching Mrs. Boast the secrets of this handy bread-making skill:
“When you haven’t milk enough to have sour milk, however do you make such delicious biscuits, Laura?” she asked.
“Why, you just make sour dough,” Laura said.
Mrs. Boast had never made sour-dough biscuits! It was fun to show her. Laura measured out the cups of sour dough, put in the soda and salt and flour, and rolled out the biscuits on the board.
In the words of my choir director, “No, Laura, you don’t ‘just make sour dough.’” As someone who daily forgets to feed her starter, I agree with this sentiment, but it does showcase the cleverness and determination of those pioneers when it came to food. Even more so, it reminds us that good food and good literature often go hand in hand.
During my recent reading of Virginia H. Ellison’s whimsical The Pooh Cook Book (illustrated in the most charming manner by E. H. Shepard), the food-centered focus of the eponymous bear was made very clear to me:
“When you wake up in the morning, Pooh,” said Piglet, “What’s the first thing you say to yourself?”
“What’s for breakfast?” said Pooh.
*
It was a warm day, and he had a long way to go. He hadn’t gone more than half-way when a sort of funny feeling began to creep all over him. It began at the tip of his nose and trickled all through him and out at the soles of his feet. It was just as if somebody inside him were saying, “Now then, Pooh, time for a little something.”
*
“What do you like doing best in the world, Pooh?”
“Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best—” and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.
Though the recipes in the book are inspired by, rather than drawn directly from, Milne’s work, they add even more color and depth to his stories. Of course Pooh would eat a Honey Chocolate Pie. Not to mention Honey Oatmeal Cookies, Honey Gingerbread Cookies, Coconut Honey Cookies, and Poohanpiglet Pancakes.
The cookbook is properly ordered, and the table of contents rightly includes “Breakfasts” and “Christmas Specialties” alongside “Smackerels, Elevenses, and Teas,” and “Provisions for Picnics and Expotitions.” Most importantly, “the cook book ends with a recipe for Getting Thin.”
If you crave a heartier fare, or have never had the pleasure of feeling full after only reading about a mighty feast, look no further than Brian Jacques’s Redwall series. Jacques’s food inventions and descriptions are legendary, and even a “simple” tea or luncheon spread sounds delectable to readers. The author’s descriptive knack was honed during his time as a milkman to an orphanage for blind children, whom he regaled with glowing tales. In his introduction to The Redwall Cookbook, however, he explains his particular reason for such mouthwatering food accounts:
And the books I’d read at the library . . . It really annoyed me when I’d come to a passage where somebody ate a marvelous feast. There never seemed to be any description of it. Afterward, the hero would ride off on his white stallion, thanking the King for the wonderful dinner. Wait! What did it taste like? What did it look like? How was it made? Did he really enjoy it? Questions that even to my young mind required much answering. That is why the fare at Redwall Abbey is featured so prominently — I’m trying to put things right!
Because it wouldn’t be a Jacques work without the spinning of a tale, this 104-page cookbook follows young Sister Pansy — a capable aide in Redwall’s fabled kitchens — as she learns the culinary secrets of the Abbey. Various beloved characters, warmly depicted by the artwork of Christopher Denise, weave in and out of the tale, hindering, helping, and suggesting. Humble as some of the food may seem to us, it is lovingly made, a gesture of care for the nourishment and well-being of others. This little volume even mirrors Jacques’s longer tales by being divided into seasons, and in true agrarian fashion, the recipes fit neatly into appropriate times of year.
Like our Redwallers, Laura Ingalls Wilder had to prepare all her own food, and also like them, she gathered it from the land or grew it herself. Unlike them, though, Laura and her family were often at the mercy of droughts, floods, locusts, and much else. It’s easy to forget the amount of backbreaking work that was required of pioneer women simply to get a meal on the table. Before it could even be prepared, it had to be grown, ground, shot, plucked, picked, skinned, brined, caught, or scaled.
In her lovely work The Little House Cookbook, Barbara M. Walker lays out these realities, along with numerous historical facts about the America of Laura’s time. Walker doesn’t condemn modern conveniences and innovations in the kitchen, but she strives to give readers an understanding of what 19th-century cooking — particularly on a farm — was like. She also gives insights into Laura’s life and includes applicable book quotations before most of the recipes. Unlike The Pooh Cook Book, all the recipes here, such as for vinegar pie, are pulled from the Little House books. One of the beauties of Laura’s tales is her clear, almost tangible descriptions of her childhood experiences, and food is a major part of those memories.
The lack of food also plays a role in Laura’s life. Listening in as my mom read The Long Winter to my youngest brother recently, I was struck by the fortitude it took for the Ingalls family to push through that terrible season. Walker brings this point home when she writes in the first chapter:
Though she tells of being listless and weak from near-starvation during the Long Winter, the storybook Laura never complains of hunger. Yet the real grownup Laura’s memory for daily fare and holiday feasts says more about her eagerness for meals, her longing for enough to eat, than it does about her interest in cooking. Farmer Boy [another Wilder work] is not merely her husband’s story; it is her own fantasy of blissful youth, surrounded on all sides by food.
As Walker says, though, “Laura never complains.” The preparation of food is never portrayed as drudgery. Her anticipation of pot roast of ox, her delight at Ma’s cooking ingenuity with green pumpkins, and her vivid memories of small tastes of lemonade all speak to her deep appreciation for what we sometimes take for granted.
There is a near-endless amount that could be said concerning food in literature. Perhaps, dear readers, now that I’ve called your attention to a few examples, you’ll respond to the feasts, snacks, and teas in the books you read with heightened interest. And now that we’re all sufficiently hungry — whether it’s for a sun-dappled picnic, a table-collapsing feast, or a salad of your own fresh-picked tomatoes — perhaps we should pop into the kitchen, whip up a small something, and thank God for His abundant culinary blessings.