This list combines two of my favourite things: literature and food, from Diana Secker Tesdell, who compiled an anthology called Stories from the Kitchen. She finds that the most memorable were those that were not just about the food.

“In literature, meals are often an occasion for transcendence. While researching my anthology, Stories from the Kitchen, I sampled scores of literary works in which food plays a starring role. Immersing myself in so many tantalising fictional feasts was hungry work. But in narrowing it down, I found that the most memorable meals are those in which much more than food is at stake. Taste, according to Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, is ‘that one of our senses which gives us the greatest joy … because it can mingle with all other pleasures, and even console us for their absence.’ When exceptional culinary and literary artistry combine, the results are satisfying in more ways than one.

“Below is a tasting menu of 10 delectable literary meals, a balanced mix of savoury and of sweet, of the humorous, the poignant, and the profound.”

The list can be found on the Guardian website: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/28/top-10-memorable-meals-in-literature.

Photo: From Babette’s Feast.