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From: amigo2@ihuxq.UUCP (John Hobson)
Newsgroups: net.cooks
Subject: Recommended cookbook
Message-ID: <574@ihuxq.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 1-Feb-84 11:08:07 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxq.574
Posted: Wed Feb  1 11:08:07 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 3-Feb-84 02:49:36 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 79

One of my favorite cookbooks is something of an oddity.  It is
called The Supper of the Lamb, by Robert Farrar Capon.  Capon is an
Episcopal priest (this is important in understanding the book), and
TSotL reminds me of Brillat-Savarin in that it is not so much a
collection of recipes as an extended essay on the art of cooking. 
He starts off with by giving the ingredients for a recipe called
"lamb for eight persons four times" and finally finishes it sixteen
chapters later.  Capon is opinionated and given to going off on
tangents, but he is a good writer, is consistantly entertaining, and
his opinions are worth listening to.

He talks about such things as making puff pastry, explaining why you
do everything, how to make a gravy, how to thicken a stew.  He is
not so interested in the hows as the whys of everything.

A typical example, talking about people who object to wine in
cookery: 

	Consider first the teetotalers.  They began, no doubt, by
	observing that some men use wine to exxcess--to the point at
	which, though the wine remains true to itself, the drinker
	does not.  That much, I give them:  Drunks are a nuisance. 
	But they went too far. Only the ungrateful or the purblind
	can see that sugar in the grape and yeast on the skins is a
	divine idea, not a human one.  Man's part in the process
	consists of honest and prudent management of the work that
	God has begun.  Something underhanded has to be done to
	grape juice to keep it from running its appointed course.
	
	Witness the teetotaling communion service.  Most
	Protestants, I suppose, imagine that it is part of the true
	Reformed religion.  But have they considered that, for
	noneteen centuries after the institution of the Eucharist,
	wine was the only element available for the sacrament?  Do
	they serious envision St. Paul or Calvin or Luther opening
	bottles of Welch's Grape Juice in the sacristy before the
	service?  Luther, at least, would turn over in his grave. 
	The WCTU version of the Lord's Supper is a bare 100 years
	old.  Grape juice was no commercially available until the
	discovery of pasteurization; and, unless I am mistaken, it
	was Mr. Welch himself (an ardent total abstainer) who
	persuaded American Protestantism to abandon what the Lord
	obviously thought rather kindly of.
	
	That much damage done, however, the itch for consistency
	took over with a vengance.  Even the Lord's own delight was
	explained away.  One of the most fanciful pieces of exegesis
	I ever read began by maintaining that the Greek word for
	wine, as used in the Gospels, meant many other things than
	wine.  The commentator cited, as I recall, *grape juice* for
	one meaning, and *raisin paste* for another.  He inclined,
	ultimately, toward the latter.
	
	I suppose that such people are blessed with reverent minds
	which prevent them from drawing irreverent conclusions.  I
	myself, however, could never resist the temptation to read
	raisin paste for wine in the story of the Miracle of Cana. 
	"When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was
	made raisin paste...he said unto the bridegroom, `Every man
	at the beginning doth set forth good raisin paste, and when
	men have well drunk [*eaten?*--the text is no doubt
	corrupt], then that which is worse:  but thou hast kept the
	good raisin paste until now.'"  Does it not whet your
	apetite for the critical *omnia opera* of such an author,
	where he will freely have at the entire length and breadth
	of Scripture?  Can you not see his promised land flowing
	with peanut butter and jelly; his apocalypse, in which the
	great whore Babylon is given the cup of the ginger ale of
	the feirceness of the wrath of God?
	
Capon has also written two other cookbooks in much the same vein,
Food For Thought and Party Spirit (in which he asks the question
What makes a successful party?).

				John Hobson
				AT&T Bell Labs
				Naperville, IL
				(312) 979-7293
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