The Romantic Armchair Traveller

France: Chocolat by Joanne Harris

A fable as rich and pungent as dark chocolate, Joanne Harris’s modern morality play takes place in a provincial French village during the season leading up to Easter and pits a witchy Samaritan against a priest embittered by thwarted ambition. The review excerpts on the cover of my paperback copy (Black Swan, 2000) describe Chocolat as a feel-good feast for the senses. That may be true of Lasse Hallström’s film version, which in its lighter tone and romanticised content differs from the novel like milk chocolate from bitter-sweet. The novel is edgier. It may be read as a spirited defence of compassion against intolerance, but, juxtaposed with the theme of redemption represented by the religious festival, the narrative’s undercurrent is curiously unconciliatory. There is enchantment in reading Chocolat, but of the Grimm kind: uneasy and slightly wild-eyed.

 

On a blustery Carnival day two strangers arrive in the staid backwater village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes: an unwed mother and her young daughter. A few days later the coverings come down from the building directly opposite the church, revealing their new shop: a chocolaterie.

Father Francis Reynaud has fought hard to build a pious community that honours decency and morality. He is incensed at the insolence with which Vianne Rocher seduces his parishioners from their Lenten self-denial with her charming smile and decadent confections. From the church pulpit he denounces her along with anyone who neglects their religious obligations and their responsibility to protect the village from disorder and corruption.

Like the Travellers who moor their barges along the riverbank below the village Vianne has never stayed anywhere long enough to put down roots. The chocolaterie is her chance to change, to become part of a community. But when she takes a stand in favour of the despised Travellers, battle lines are drawn and the village is split into opposing camps. Will Lansquenet be the place where Vianne finally stops running, or will the voices of oppression once again force her and her daughter to follow the wind?

 

Chocolat is not really a journey into France: the novel offers very little to take away from the destination point of view. The village mentality it describes could easily apply to places beyond the borders of France, and many of the characters are people you might meet almost anywhere. This, in my opinion, matters little.

Situated along a tributary of the Garonne River near Agen (Lot-et-Garonne, Aquitaine), the fictional village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes is a mix of gritty French realism and fairytale quaintness. This is story magic at work: even as entirely unsentimental descriptions depict a forgettable, shabby little town one might drive past with an absent-minded glance on a tour of the French countryside, the drama inside the community unfolds with the gaudiness and buffoonery of a Guignol show: in defiant swirls of bright colour, in whispers that subvert, in violent passions of the soul.

The deliciousness of Chocolat is served up in luscious writing that revels in sensory detail but may feel too calorific if you don’t like descriptive prose that is effervescent as a genie drunk on a bottle of chocolate liquor. After all, the tastes, aromas, textures, comforts, and conflicts in Chocolat arise from a South American bean once considered the food of the gods. It has the power to move and to madden, and its presence is felt in every scene: the froth and bubble of the hot chocolate in silver pots that sends tendrils of sweet-scented invitations through the shop door; two florentines placed gently on the saucer of a grieving man’s chocolate espresso; the blush-inducing sweets called nipples of Venus and the summing up of a personality with “pralines shaped to look like tightly closed oysters”; the chocolatey hallucinations of a man light-headed from severe fasting...

The one thing chocolate is not in this book is a cure. Its warmth, sweetness, and exoticism comfort, gladden, strengthen, and subvert. Under its influence, sombre shadows lighten. But only for a moment. To the very end, the narrative never entirely frees itself of dark undercurrents. Neither of the main characters escape being marked by the darkness they have fought, each in their own way. Doubts and fears haunt everyone, and brittle anxieties that sometimes border on hysteria skitter around tightly wound rage. The language itself mocks and stings as it reveals, sometimes with startling glee, suppressed hostilities, ill will, and condemnation. Words such as these abound, and they are not confined to the villain/s: malicious, malignant, malevolent, contemptuous, sneer, vicious, vindictiveness, bile, mocking, spite, knife, barbed, poisonous, venomous, menace, clawing, snigger.

The finality of an ending that has the tone and quality of a judgement further underscores that the novel is not a fairytale but more akin to a morality play. Paradoxically, despite the symbolism inherent in the Lenten and Easter-tide setting – including a Good Friday death – and the importance placed on compassion and inclusion, we see no merciful conciliation of opposing forces, no cathartic redemption of those who have acted badly. (For contrition and forgiveness, you will have to turn to the film version.)

Although Chocolat is a character-driven story peopled by eccentrics and outsiders, hypocrites and gentlemen, fanatics and pragmatics, most, however well-drawn, are types rather than multi-dimensional characters. Don’t expect a layered, complex exploration of the nature and meaning of goodness or virtue. This is an allegory in which everybody plays a pre-assigned part. The message is never in doubt, and at the end the forces of good triumph and the wicked are cast out.

The two principal characters, Vianne Rocher and Father Reynaud, are also the narrators of the story. Chapters of open-hearted commentary by Vianne alternate with Reynaud’s confession-like outpourings at the bedside of his stroke-paralysed mentor and predecessor. From the beginning, Vianne’s attitude that what matters in life is happiness, whether or not the Church is part of it, clashes with Reynaud’s conviction that salvation can only be reached through denial of self. Her experiences have taught her to value tolerance; his, that pity and charity breed moral corruption.

Soon, the chocolaterie that is the culmination of Vianne's efforts to finally settle down and lead a normal life begins to symbolise something much worse to Reynaud than pagan hedonism during a time of religious abstinence. Is not Vianne’s chocolaterie – a combination of café and confiserie – in fact a rival to the Church and the confessional? As a community forms around the shop, as people come together there to unburden their hearts, make friends, and find solace in dreams and tasty pleasures, Reynaud seethes at the mockery he perceives in the very name of place : La Céleste Praline (The Heavenly Praline). At the same time, battling the chocolaterie gives the priest a sense of purpose that has been lacking from his life. Having always thought himself destined for greater things, his frustration at being stuck with an insignificant rural parish has fostered self-pity which he nows throws off, rejuvenated by the opportunity to prove his worth to his flock and to God. So when his initial attempt to boycott the chocolaterie fails, he begins to take everything Vianne does personally. The chocolate festival she plans for Easter Sunday, for example, not only scorns the holiest of Christian ceremonies but must be intended to undermine his authority. She is the witch in the gingerbread house who lures in the innocent and devours them.

Vianne has inherited her mother’s restlessness and wandering lifestyle, which always was fueled by unnamed fears and doubts. It has made Vianne sceptical of conventional morality and its oppressive voice of authority that turns communities against those who are different. Father Reynaud seems the personification of the most pernicious sort of bigotry. But for the love of her daughter, Anouk, whose only friend is an imaginary rabbit, Vianne tries to break with the past and face up to whatever fate brings. And if in the process of changing herself she brings change to close-minded Lansquenet it is surely for the better, she reasons. So why is her sleep is haunted by nightmares that destroy her peace? While knowing she must curb her otherness - in particular the intuition that allows her to read and subtly influence other lives - if she is is to make Lansquenet her and Anouk's permanent home, the questions and uncertainties that beset her nevertheless drive her to desperately try to divine the future with her mother's Tarot cards. Snatches of the song V'là l'bon vent keep flitting through her mind, a reminder of the restless wind that never seems to cease calling her name. (The song is one I, too, remember from childhood, sung by Nana Mouskouri on Vieilles Chansons de France, which I still love. I am including a link to the CD on Amazon because it allows one to listen to a sample of the refrain.)

In Lansquenet, she learns, it does not take much to induce guilt or freeze somebody out. Joséphine Muscat, the kleptomaniac wife of an abusive barowner, endures backstabbing gossip and snide glances every day: “’[...] if you don’t go to confession, if you don’t respect your husband, if you don’t cook three meals a day and sit by the fire thinking decent thoughts and waiting for him to come home, if you don’t have children – and you don’t bring flowers to your friends’ funerals or vacuum the parlour or – dig – the – flowerbeds!’ She was red-faced with the effort of speaking. Her rage was intense, enormous. ‘Then you’re crazy!’ she spat. ‘You’re crazy, you’re abnormal and people – talk –about – you behind your back and – and – and–’” (page 72).

So, who is considered "good" in Chocolat? Reynaud, the Pharisee whose scrupulous observance of ritual and blindness to the spirit of the law has created a flock of obedient churchgoers whose piety is superficial, wonders why none of them show him affection. It would be a mistake to assume that the novel vilifies Christians, though; the good people in Lansquenet include churchgoers like Guillaume, the gentlest, kindest, and, to me, most touching character in the book. It is he who most clearly embraces the message of humanity the story aims to impress on the reader: love thy neighbour – not only thy Christian neighbour – as thyself.

About ten years have passed since I last read Chocolat. In the meantime, Joanne Harris has written a sequel, titled The Lollipop Shoes (UK)/The Girl With No Shadow (USA). I have not yet read it. For now, I am still recovering from the box of Guylian Sea Shells I plundered while revisiting La Céleste Praline. Generally, I favour milk chocolate (preferably Fazer's Geisha) but for Joanne Harris's darkly appetising tale I continue to make an exception.

 

A film of related interest: The film version of Chocolat (2000) retains the novel's message but in other respects differs widely. The novel is set in contemporary France, but despite an occasional mention of a VCR or a flatscreen television has a deceptively vintage atmosphere. The filmmakers took their cue from this and set the film's story in 1959. The character of Reynaud (played wonderfully by Alfred Molina) has been re-written to make him the mayor of Lansquenet (moved from Aquitaine to Flavigny-sur-Ozerain in Burgundy), and Vianne - a glowing Juliette Binoche - is given a romance. The set design and cinematography enhance the lighter, prettier aspects without making everything too sugary. Still, romantics may prefer this version of Chocolat and France.

 

Hot Chocolate With A Taste Of Faraway Lands

(Adapted from a recipe in a Bon Appétit magazine. For Vianne's hot chocolate recipe, go here.)

  

• 2 cups whole milk (reduced fat milk does not carry the “weight” of the spices as well)
• 1/4 cup dark brown sugar, packed
• 5 whole cardamom pods, crushed
• 4 whole cloves
• 1/2 cinnamon stick
• 1/4 teaspoon whole coriander seeds
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• pinch of dried crushed red pepper
• 3 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

 

Bring everything except the cocoa powder and vanilla extract to a simmer in a heavy saucepan, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Remove from the stove, cover, and let steep 20 minutes. Add cocoa powder and vanilla. Return to a simmer, whisking until blended. Strain. Pour the hot chocolate into two mugs.

 

Mali: Footprints In The Sand by Sarah Challis

A delightful combination of chick-lit-style road adventure and fictionalised travelogue, Footprints In The Sand by Sarah Challis is the next best thing if you are unable to throw on your backpack and head for Africa this instant.

Feeling vague about Mali? If the mention of Tuaregs, a music festival in the desert, Dogon masks, or the world’s largest earthen building (in the UNESCO world heritage site of Djenné) don’t ring a bell, remember the villainous Edgar of Aristocats who was shipped off to Timbuktu? Much too good a fate for him, if you ask me. Hopefully, as it did for one of the protagonists of Footprints In The Sand, Mali inspired a life-changing epiphany.

 

When cantankerous, Harrods-loving Great-Aunt Mary dies, her will tasks two twenty-something relatives, cousins Emily and Clemmie Kingsley, with a mission that stuns the Dorset farming family: scatter her ashes in the Malian portion of the Sahara desert.

Clemmie is enchanted by the prospect of the adventure of a lifetime, but Emily balks. Miserable in the wake of her breakup from an unfaithful boyfriend, the last thing she wants is to chase another illusion. Nobody has ever heard of the location Great-Aunt Mary’s will mentions, nor suspected she had any connection to Africa: what if the eccentric idea was an attack of senility? Beryl Timmis, Mary’s companion, is of no help in puzzling out the mystery; silently she hopes nothing will come of the affair. But Clemmie overcomes every objection, and as her best friend, Emily reluctantly gives in. Now the only question that remains is how they will hunt down a place that does not exist on any map – and in the process of unravelling Mary’s secret, try to figure out the unspoken responsibilities of friendship.

 

As I devoured Footprints In The Sand, mental images from a completey unrelated film kept popping up in my head. The snappy, humorous exchanges between optimistic idealist Clemmie and practical skeptic Emily reminded me of girlfriends Mary McCormack and Minnie Driver in the British crime-comedy High Heels And Low Lifes. (Driver and McCormack have great chemistry, the quirky-never-a-dull-moment plot and dialogue crackle with energy and fun, and the ending is sassily upbeat. Just thinking about that film makes me grin.) The dynamic between the women, the British origin of both film and book, the pursuit of a madcap undertaking, and the positive focus on female friendship are probably the only similarities between book and film. Except that in my head, Emily and Clemmie now look and talk like Driver and McCormack (and yes, I realise the latter is American).

Footprints In The Sand starts out rather conventionally, but the chatty warmth and immediacy of the narrative style kept me entertained until the story gathered steam with the revelation of Great-Aunt Mary’s request. Despite the mystery at its heart, the plot is on the thin side, yet absorbing and not entirely predictable. What propelled me to turn the pages with unflagging curiosity were the quixotic nature of the mission, the character revelations, the emotional secrets, and the fascination of discovering Mali. Sarah Challis’s flair for painterly metaphors and illuminating detail are a joy and proved a saving grace when the cousins’ road trip from Bamako (Mali’s capital) temporarily strayed into the territory of enthusiastic travelogue.

The front cover of my edition of Footprints In The Sand has the following line: What happens when you finish someone else’s journey? The inner journeys of the characters parallel the cousins’ travel expedition. At the same time, this is not a new age tale replete with mystical life lessons. Emily and Clemmie’s personalities and their attitude to the country they are travelling through infuse the tone with breezy humour and self-irony, ensuring that moments of darker emotion never bog the story down in self-important melodrama. Any messages are left for the reader to infer.

The story is alternately narrated by Emily and Clemmie, with brief, at first seemingly random, but actually crucial insertions by Beryl Timmis. The two younger women’s casually confident voices are clearly distinct from the anxious strain of Beryl’s, whose account gradually develops into an unsettling counterpoint to the cousins’ adventure. In segments where plot development takes a back seat, their different outlooks provide a tension that kept me fully absorbed in the story.

Perceived by others as a timid spinster frightened of her own shadow, Beryl Timmis is treated with absent-minded indulgence. With Mary’s death and shock of a request, the past comes back to haunt Beryl. As Clemmie and Sarah travel to Africa, Beryl, now installed in a first-class retirement home thanks to Mary’s generosity, travels back in memory to the secrecy-laden turning point in her and Mary’s lives. Beryl’s internal monologue reveals a side of which others seem oblivious: self-pity centred around a selfish, critical kernel that retains little sweetness and only feigned dottiness. Gradually, through memories she has unsuccessfully tried to repress, an increasingly disturbing picture emerges. While Clemmie and Emily literally journey through sunshine, Beryl’s fears in winter-gloomy England lurk like chill shadows at the edges of the main tale.

Clemmie is Beryl’s opposite. Bubbling with enthusiasm, she sees the best in every person and finds the silver lining in any situation. In England, she has been drifting through life without clear focus, not unhappy, but dreaming of something special that will show her what life should be about. Her acceptance of the here and now makes her more easily contented than Emily, and her open nature seems to invite miracles. Situations Emily suffers through with boredom or worry are just as likely to be sources of meditative reflection and serenity for Clemmie.

Emily views her cousin’s impetuousness with a mix of grumpy exasperation and sisterly fondness. An elementary school teacher who is struggling to come to terms with her breakup with a longtime boyfriend, she sees the trip not as an adventure but a series of challenges, and is repeatedly on the brink of resigning herself to the potential failure of their mission. The Sahara desert tests her to the extreme, and the question becomes whether history will repeat itself.

A strong theme evolves through the contrasting and complementing friendships of Mary and Beryl versus Emily and Clemmie: even well-meaning meddling with an individual’s power to choose her/his own way can kill a spirit and give rise to a lifetime of regrets.

Mali transforms the cousins’ perception of the world and of themselves, and their meeting with locals who become guides and friends turn their unconventional task into something resembling a pilgrimage. While Challis’s admiration for the country (which she has personally visited) is evident and she pokes gentle fun at Western tourists, she deftly avoids the cliché of painting the place as an African Shangri-La. Footprints In The Sand is not interested in offering an analysis of cultural otherness (at least not directly; it is discoveries of sameness that most often fascinate the two women). Even so, while the story may not dive very deeply beneath the surface glamour of exotic travel – rough-and-ready though the actual mode of travel may be – Emily and Clemmie do experience an uncomfortable awareness of the exploitative side of tourism in a poor country. “I did not enjoy being a sightseer and neither did Emily. With nothing to offer, nothing to give, we were just gawpers from another world.” (Page 269.)

My enjoyment of Footprints In The Sand was such that few flaws bothered me. As different as Beryl’s voice is from those of Clemmie and Emily, this difference was liable to evaporate when it came to certain instances of descriptive imagery. Instead of Beryl’s fussy negativity, Clemmie’s cheerful optimism, or Emily’s skepticism, I would suddenly hear the author being unable to resist inserting a particularly labored-over passage whether or not it fit the character’s thought pattern or voice. Each time it happened I was pulled out of the character’s head for a moment.

One thing remained unclear to me at the conclusion of the story. I can only try to guess at why Mary selected Clemmie and Emily rather than someone else from the large Kingsley clan. Perhaps the cousins’ friendship inspired Mary to try to write a new ending for the past? Perhaps she wanted to open up the truth in the hope that someone might finally understand her, someone who might gain something equally life-changing from it? I don’t know, but neither does it matter much to me since it detracts nothing essential from the story.

Finally, I have seen some otherwise satisfied readers grumble about the ending being “sappy” or “silly”. Those less allergic to romantic story elements should be aware that the romance that occurs is an end result – the expression of a spiritual (as distinct from religious) homecoming – not a subplot.

Footprints In The Sand was recommended by Mog, and I am so glad I listened! Reading it proved an undiluted pleasure and the most charming armchair trip I took all summer.

 

Excerpt

(Headline Review, paperback, 2007, page 86-88):

“Although I had agreed to go to Mali with her, there was still one conversation I felt we had to have.

‘Okay, Clem,’ I said, taking a deep breath, ‘let’s get this clear from the start. If we get out there and find that we can’t make contact with this man of Great-Aunt Mary’s, this Salika person, then that is it. We find a suitable place to scatter the old girl and we call it a day. I’m not going wandering off on our own in the Sahara. You’ve got to know what you are doing in an environment like that and you’ve got to be with people you can trust. I looked up Mali on the Foreign Office travel advice page this afternoon. Look at this!’ I handed her a printed sheet and waited while she skimmed through it.

‘I know all this,’ she said airily, handing it back. ‘Will told me. But they always exaggerate, don’t they? They try and put you off going anywhere but the New Forest or a coach tour of the Lake District.’

I picked up the sheet and read out, ‘Because of increased risk of banditry and kidnap we advise against travel to the north of Timbuktu. Bandits and smugglers across the borders of Mali, Mauritania, and Algeria constitute a real risk to travellers, especially after dark.’

Clemmie had picked up a hand mirror and was studying an imaginary spot on her face, refusing to meet my eye. Instead she said, ‘Emily! Pick up that free local paper on the table. What’s that on the front page? Muggings? A rape? In one week, and in this neighbourhood alone. London is a million times more dangerous than Mali, where crime levels are actually really low. It says so if you read on a bit. Anyway,’ she said, putting down the mirror and looking at me brightly, ‘wouldn’t it be blissful to be kidnapped by those camel men? It would beat teaching, wouldn’t it?’

I shook my head. Sometimes Clemmie’s remarks are too silly to merit an answer. On the other hand, she was probably expressing her real opinion. It would be typical of her to think that it would be exciting to be kidnapped.

‘It would be a big mistake on their part,’ I said. ‘Who do you think would pay the ransom? I can’t see the Kingsleys forking out to get us back.’

‘Isn’t it said,’ said Clemmie, ‘to be so superfluous?’”

 

A book of related interest: As far as I have been able to find out, Clive Cussler’s Sahara was published in 1992, the year Mali was holding its first democratic presidential election. Thus its description of a fictional dictatorship instantly dated the novel, as do the descriptions of violent rule and rampant corruption. USAid now considers Mali one of the most stable countries in Africa. With that it mind, Sahara (and its film adaptation) becomes a book best read as a fantasy adventure rather than a tale grounded in reality.

Edited to add (13 June 2011): An intriguing romantic novel also set in the Sahara, The Salt Road by Jane Johnson takes a much closer look at Tuaregs. I have posted about it here.

Food In Fiction: It Can’t Always Be Caviar by Johannes Mario Simmel

 

Being a high-wire secret agent during World War II and its aftermath is particularly tricky if you happen to be a firm pacifist.

 

The hard-to-find* gem, It Can’t Always Be Caviar (Es Muß Nicht Immer Kaviar Sein), was an international bestseller in the Sixties. In 1961 the novel was even adapted into a film. The back blurb of my 1967 Mayflower-Dell paperback shouts out in bold orange and turquoise lettering, “Fleming? Deighton? Le Carré? This is Europe’s answer”!

Those comparisons really do not do Johannes Mario Simmel’s book justice. For one thing, the tone of the story is that of a caper, humorous and irreverent, and for another, the main protagonist really, really does not want to have anything to do with government institutions or killing.

Unfortunately for Thomas Lieven and luckily for us readers, the vagaries of fate and raw talent get him recruited by the intelligence organisations of one country after another. He has to figure out not only how to stay alive in the cut-throat game of espionage, but how to get out of the deplorable messes that governments create for each other and their citizens - without resorting to violence. How, exactly, he manages to outwit his German, British, French, and American superiors while simultaneously aiding his fellow human beings through methods that satisfy his own ideas about morality and honour provides one of the most amusing and original spy thrillers – or books of any genre, come to think of it – I have ever had the pleasure of reading.

Thomas’s twin passions are cooking and women, and all the most critical points in his life are linked to one or the other, or both. For example, on 4th September 1940, a meal consisting of “Fried Onion Soup, Veal Fillets in Madeira Sauce, and Pancakes Flambées” facilitates Thomas’s transition from “the youngest private banker in London” to an expert passport forger. “Good God Almighty! And I shall never, never, never be able to tell the story in the club!” (Page 114-115.)

His culinary adventures are laid out in as careful detail as his spying escapades, enabling the reader to recreate each recipe. As for the women? He finally meets his match and – well, read it yourself ;-)

In the novel’s pages Simmel makes the claim that the story is based on actual events and persons. I will leave the truth of that for any fellow readers to decide.

 

*A new French edition seems to have been released last year, titled On N’A Pas Toujours Du Caviar, by Robert Laffont/Pavillons Poche. German-language editions also seem to be readily available.

 

Excerpt

(Mayflower-Dell paperback, 1967, page 9, 10, 11):

“His name is not, of course, Thomas Lieven.

We shall be forgiven, in the circumstances, for changing both his name and his address. But the story of this once peaceful citizen, who still loves cooking and who involuntarily became one of the most daring adventurer’s of his day, is true.

We begin it on the evening of April 11, 1957, at the historic moment when Thomas Lieven was lecturing on the preparation of lettuces.

Let us go back, then, to the kitchen in his villa.

‘Never let a salad come into contact with metal,’ said Thomas Lieven.

Kitty gazed as though hypnotized at her employer’s slender hands and listened to his instructions with continually renewed excitement.

‘For the sauce,’ said Thomas Lieven, ‘we need a pinch of salt and a teaspoonful of strong mustard. We add a hard-boiled egg, sliced small. Then plenty of parsley and even more chives. Four tablespoons of genuine Italian olive oil. The oil please, Kitty!’

With a blush, Kitty handed him the desired article.

‘Four spoonfuls of that, as I said. And now a cup of cream, sweet or sour according to taste. I’ll settle for sour–’

At that moment the kitchen door opened and a giant entered. He wore pin-striped trousers, a jacket striped blue and white, a white shirt and a white tie. Without his upright thatch of hair he would have resembled a second, excessively large, edition of Yul Brynner.

‘What is it, Bastien?’ asked Thomas Lieven.

The manservant answered in a slightly drawling French accent: ‘Herr Direktor Schallenberg has arrived.’

‘On the dot, eh?’ Thomas commented. ‘That’s the kind of man I can work with.’

[...]

MENU

Lady Curzon Soup
Paprika Chicken
Clara Salad
Rice
Apple Hedgehog with Wine Custard
Toast and Cheese

11 APRIL 1957

This dinner brought in 717,850 Swiss francs.

[...]

Apple Hedgehog With Wine Custard

Ripe apples of equal size are peeled, slowly simmered in vanilla-flavored syrup and before they disintegrate removed to a strainer to drain. Meanwhile almonds are blanched, cut into strips, put on a baking sheet and well roasted. As soon as the apples are properly drained they are drenched with a liqueur, rum or cognac, speared with the cut almonds and placed on a dish. For the custard the yolks of two eggs are mixed till foamy with half a cup of sugar, two tablespoons of cornstarch, half a cup of water and a cup of white wine. The mixture is then stirred over a small flame until thick. The whites of the two eggs are beaten until stiff and folded into the mixture, being flavored if desired with rum, arrack, cognac or similar spirits.”

 

Wishing you mouth-watering readings!

(For another fictional, culinary feast that I highly recommend, see The Food of Love by Anthony Capella.)