A rich, copper-hued bitter with “hints of roasted nuts and floral aromas” may not have been the first thing that readers thought of as they settled into Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent. But her publisher Serpent’s Tale hopes an ale from East Anglia’s Saffron Brewery created to mark the book’s paperback launch this month will entice beer drinkers to imbibe the much-praised novel, too.
Books and beverages have a long, intertwined relationship. Who doesn’t love a pint, or tea – or a pint of tea – while reading? It is rare, however, for the delights created in the kitchens of authors’ imaginations to inspire real-life concoctions available in supermarkets. Which is sad, as novelists often have readers’s mouths watering; in fact, one cannot help but wonder why the grey suits in food and drink marketing haven’t turned to literature for delicious inspiration before.
That does not mean slapping Proust’s mugshot on a packet of factory-made madeleines more redolent of nightmares than waking dreams; nor that sickly, sticky brew peddled as Butterbeer at Harry Potter dos. (Real Butterbeer surely tastes of burnt toffee, butter and – most of all – booze?) No, instead readers want Rumer Godden’s Coromandel curries, or any of the sumptuous plates served up in Molly Keane’s novels. Or turning out chicken so sexy you rip off your clothes a la Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones. And the hot chocolates that slip down as easily as French silk stockings, from Joanne Harris’s Chocolat.
The king of fictional cuisine was French writer Émile Zola, and never more so than in his 1873 classic Le Ventre de Paris, the latest English translation of which was published in 2009 as The Belly of Paris. Cheese lovers will gobble up the scene widely known as “the cheese symphony”: a depiction of a market stall groaning with cheeses for every palate, from “a gigantic Cantal cheese, cloven here and there as by an axe”, through “golden-hued” Cheshires to Bries on round platters “looking like melancholy extinct moons”.
The thing to pair with a Zola gorgonzola would obviously be spirits. Ian Fleming’s James Bond could be co-opted by a crafty gin, to be shaken and never stirred in a sophisticated martini. Or, for readers preferring sleaze to sophistication, gumshoe Philip Marlowe’s gimlets in Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye would be perfect. Chandler knew his booze and his recipe – a large slug of gin, the drink du nos jours, and an equal slug of Rose’s lime juice shaken well on ice and strained – would also be a perfect way to reinvent Rose’s, now more usually found in your granny’s cupboard than anywhere trendy.
For something darker, who better to ask than Hannibal Lecter? Thomas Harris’s cannibal doctor could lend a frisson of wickedness to chianti – a so-so wine if ever there was one. A Lecter label could be served with special meats inspired by Michel Faber’s Under the Skin – alongside a plate of fava beans, of course.
Authors have provided plenty of fare best avoided by food manufacturers looking for easy merch. Miss Havisham Wedding Cake is unlikely to be the latest must-have on Pinterest and I doubt Covent Garden soups will be looking to sign up Patrick O’Brian’s recipe from the Aubrey/Maturin novels for “shit soup”: a repellent concoction of seawater and guano.
That said, it didn’t stop the author working with two cooks to feature the noxious brew in the Lobscouse and Spotted Dog cookbook, based on the meals in his novels. Perhaps he should have opened a restaurant? Though he would have done well to make sure that, however achingly cool it became, literature’s most terrifying foodie, Patrick Bateman, was always able to find a table. “Free range squid”, anyone?
