10 Books Involving Food (Top Ten Tuesday)

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I thought I was going to struggle with this prompt but it turned out to be really fun to think about.. and made me very hungry!

I managed to mix in a couple of contemporary lit. books but I did have to pad the list in the end with some obvious classics.. but not Harry Potter, and I’m very proud of that!

These are in no particular order!

1. A Certain Hunger

A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers has the most over the top delicious, fecund writing style because the narrator, Dorothy Daniels, is both a pompous food critic and a cannibal. I had such a great time reading this book last year, I loved it. The writing is *chefs kiss.*

The meat was quite tasty, chewier than beef, certainly, but with an earthy thrum, a kind of truffled bass note, and the piquancy that comes only from the deepest flavor of nostalgia.

2. The Expanse series

The Expanse series by James S.A. Corey really tries to create a realistic vision of what life in space could be like, and that includes food. Often there are scenes of characters cooking and eating on the Roci, and the crew members recognise that this is an important ritual that makes them feel like a family. I’m also very curious what the Belter food ‘red kibble’ would be like!

This is a scene from Leviathan Wakes.

Naomi blended together fake eggs and fake cheese. Amos cooked tomato paste and the last of their fresh mushrooms into a red sauce that actually smelled like the real thing. Alex, who had the duty watch, had forwarded ship ops down to a panel in the galley and sat at a table next to it, spreading the fake cheese paste and red sauce onto flat noodles in hopes that the end result would approximate lasagna. Holden had oven duty and had spent the lasagna prep time baking frozen lumps of dough into bread. The smell in the galley was not entirely unlike actual food.

3. Almost everything by Roald Dahl!

It’s hard to pick one Roald Dahl book but just making a list of 10 of them would feels like cheating! There is the cake in Matilda, the everything in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the peach in James and the Giant Peach, the worm spaghetti in The Twits! Even his short story for adults Lamb to the Slaughter!

I’m going to with this quote from The Twits because it lives in my brain:

‘Hey, my spaghetti’s moving!’ cried Mr Twit, poking around in it with his fork.
‘It’s a new kind,’ Mrs Twit said, taking a mouthful from her own plate which of course had no worms. ‘It’s called Squiggly Spaghetti. It’s delicious. Eat it up while it’s nice and
hot.’

I had the Revolting Recipes book as a kid and I still make the chocolate cake today! Best chocolate cake recipe I’ve ever tried.

4. Convenience Store Woman

In Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata Keiko lives for her job. She lovingly keeps the aisles stocked with grocery items, and helps her customers pack their bags with care but she takes no pleasure in eating. Food is merely necessary fuel for the body so that she can work. Some of my favourite passages are her preparing the daily “feed.”

When I think that my body is entirely made up of food from this store, I feel like I’m as much a part of the store as the magazine racks or the coffee machine.

5. We Spread

We Spread by Iain Reid is such a layered and interesting bit of weird fiction. At Six Cedars meal times are folded into the surreal routine and ritual of the home, something that Penny initially finds comfort in but that twists with her paranoia.

Despite my nerves from earlier, it’s soothing to see a group of old people, of my peers, eating together. Not just eating, but savoring their food. I haven’t shared a meal with anyone in a very long time. I can’t remember when. All my dinner parties feel from another life. Eating with others, talking, making eye contact, it’s such a fundamental part of being a person. A daily ritual.

Later in the book she measures the passage of time by hiding food and checking it for signs of decay.

6. The Famous Five

I read all Famous Five by Enid Blyton when I was a kid (all 21 of my Mum’s 70s paperbacks)! Every adventure involved a picnic! It always sounded delicious – sandwiches, hard boiled eggs, cakes and of course lashings of ginger beer! I also recall them having pretty tasty sounding meals when they ate indoors with Aunt Fanny and Uncle Quentin! The Five have even inspired a cook book: Five Go Feasting!

Also honourable mention to everything else Enid Blyton ever wrote! Including Malory Towers and their midnight feasts, and the Secret Seven with their commitment to snacks at the meetings! Blyton kids always prioritised food.

7. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Another childhood classic is of course the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. Naturally Turkish Delight is the first thing I think of – so delicious you’ll sell out your entire family for it – but Mr Tumnus giving  Lucy all that fantastic sounding toast is up there too! I remember lots of other descriptions of cakes, pies and pastries through the books!

There was a nice brown egg, lightly boiled, for each of them, and then sardines on toast, and then buttered toast, and then toast with honey, and then a sugar-topped cake. And when Lucy was tired of eating, the Faun began to talk. He had wonderful tales to tell of life in the forest.

8. A Song of Ice and Fire

A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin is famously full of a lot of scenes of people eating. Not only does the food on the table tell you a lot about what’s happening with the scene or the characters, but it will be the most detailed and mouthwatering description of food you’ve ever read (even better than Mr Tumnus and his toast). It is definitely one of things that helps make the characters and the world feel more real, and me feel hungry. Most memorable for me are Sansa’s favourite lemon cakes, Hot Pies pies, Dornish peppers (all the Dornish food!) and all the spiced wine! Unsurprisingly, the series has inspired a cook book!

Here is a description from A Dance With Dragons of Sisters Stew so detailed it’s basically a recipe!

The beer was brown, the bread black, the stew a creamy white. She served it in a trencher hollowed out of a stale loaf. It was thick with leeks, carrots, barley, and turnips white and yellow, along with clams and chunks of cod and crabmeat, swimming in a stock of heavy cream and butter. It was the sort of stew that warmed a man right down to his bones, just the thing for a wet, cold night. Davos spooned it up gratefully.

9. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is another classic that comes to mind that’s full of food and eating. Most obviously there is the tea party, and all the cakes that Alice eats to change size, but this book is also how I learned about Mock Turtle soup!

Soon her eye fell upon a little glass box lying underneath the table. She opened it and found in it a very small cake, on which the words “EAT ME” were beautifully marked in currants

10. Great Expectations

Charles Dickens is another author who memorably uses food in his novels. Famously the titular Oliver Twist asked for more gruel in the workhouse, and Scrooge provided that sumptuous Christmas day meal at the end of A Christmas Carol. I think most significantly meals are a strong literary motif in Great Expectations used to explore aspects of love, charity, social power and moral character and mark milestones in Pip’s life.

But who can ever forget the description of Miss Havisham’s mouldy, spider-infested wedding cake?

The most prominent object was a long table with a tablecloth spread on it, as if a feast had been in preparation when the house and the clocks all stopped together. An epergne or centrepiece of some kind was in the middle of this cloth; it was so heavily overhung with cobwebs that its form was quite undistinguishable; and, as I looked along the yellow expanse out of which I remember its seeming to grow, like a black fungus, I saw speckled-legged spiders with blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it, as if some circumstances of the greatest public importance had just transpired in the spider community.

I don’t know what it says about me that the first literary foods that came to mind were Dorothy Daniel’s rump steak, worm spaghetti, and disgusting old cake!

Bonus recipe!

Unfortunately I have no idea where I found this scan of the recipe online, because it’s been on my phone for 2 years, but it’s a page from the Revolting Recipes cook book!

Here is a link to a blog I found with a copy of the recipe.