Serve It Forth

A witty, idiosyncratic guided tour through culinaria past and present by the inimitable M.F.K. Fisher.

In Serve It Forth, her first book, M.F.K. Fisher takes readers on an animated journey through culinary history, beginning with the honey-loving Greeks and the immoderate Romans. Fisher recalls a hunt for snails and truffles with one of the last adepts in that art and recounts how Catherine de Medici, lonely for home cooking, touched off a culinary revolution by bringing Italian chefs to France. Each essay makes clear the absolute firmness of Fisher's taste-contrarian and unique-and her skill at stirring memory and imagination into a potent brew.