Marcel Proust is known for a lot, just not necessarily as a

food writer

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Hardly anyone writes so grippingly about what good food can do to you.

Just think of the most famous moment in “In Search of Lost Time”: the scene with the Madeleine.

First-person narrator Marcel dips the pastry in the tea.

"In the second now," writes Proust, "as this sip of tea mixed with the pastry crumbs touched my palate, I winced and was spellbound by something unusual that was happening in me."

A simple cup of tea and a simple piece of pastry become the starting point for a journey into the depths of memory and consciousness.

Proust's experience with the Madeleine is more or less the same that you can have with a piece of cheesecake that tastes just like grandma's and thus brings back memories of afternoons on the terrace, under the cherry tree, with juice or Caro coffee in the cup and a piece of that cake - only Proust describes it more eloquently.

Marcel, the first-person narrator of “In Search of Lost Time” has the leisure to trace these memories in great detail.

Culinary descriptions from restaurants to dinner parties

Apart from this legendary scene, Proust's work is full of culinary references and descriptions of dishes and menus. The fine society, which Proust so skilfully describes satirically, meets above all while eating at home or in restaurants, at dinner parties and noble receptions. What is served is often a reason for long considerations. It goes so far that the literary scholar JM Cocking writes: “Parts of Proust's poetry are sublimated gastronomy.” Of course, this is also reflected in the staff who populate the world in search of lost time. Above all, cook Françoise will be remembered, who describes Proust in a loving, mocking tone and places her in a row with other artist figures whom the narrator Marcel meets: La Berma, the actress,Elstir, the painter, or Bergotte, the writer.

Proust describes the realm of this cook as the “Temple of Venus” and she is allowed to create her magnum opus right at the beginning of the second volume: a “Boeuf Mode en Gelee”, a braised beef in aspic.

The dish is highly praised by the guest.

In a flashback, Proust extensively describes the meticulous preparation of this rather elaborate dish.

But the feeling of elation abruptly supports the dessert: pineapple and truffle salad.

The combination of the two dishes just doesn't work.

The guest does not disdain the salad, but instead stares at it blankly.

At the radiant request of the hostess, he then takes another lookup - with a tortured smile, you introduce yourself while reading.

Aspik has had its prime

The cookbook “At Marcel Proust's Guest”, which the literary scholar Anne Borel wrote together with the restaurant manager Alain Senderens, shows that the kitchen that Proust serves up these days tends to raise eyebrows rather than watery mouths. Aspic, for example, has had its prime as a food trend since the seventies at the latest and dishes such as “rays in brown butter” or “The maidens of Caen, roasted in the eternal fire” (grilled lobster) are not necessarily shaken by the common hobby cook so out of the sleeve. The “Japanese Salad”, on the other hand, at which Swann sees his future wife Odette for the first time, turns out to be not very Japanese (it's a potato salad with mussels) and soufflés are only for cooks with nerves like wire ropes.

“Guest at Marcel Proust” was published in 1992 and shows, especially in beautiful, now rather old-fashioned photographs, what the dishes and tables must have looked like that Marcel, Swann and all the staff from “In Search of Lost Time” enjoyed to have. In the explanatory texts, Anne Borel extensively describes the table culture in Proust's texts and that what is served also fulfills many other functions and not only makes you full: Here, food becomes a distinguishing feature and depending on who serves what, it is then too the judgment is made - in the worst case "tasteless".

But why all of this? Anyone who has read “Lord of the Rings” knows that with page-by-page descriptions of something you can quickly collect a very thick book. But Proust does the whole theater about food for another reason: The whole, 1.2 million word long novel cycle is a celebration of the arts, of aesthetic experiences and how they enrich life. And for Proust, eating is simply part of it. A look at Hegel's aesthetics shows, for example, that this was not a matter of course for a long time. A good hundred years before Proust, the German culinary philosopher still denied that it was suitable for art because “taste does not leave the object free for itself, but has to deal with it in real practical terms, dissolves it and consumes it.A formation and refinement of the taste is only possible and necessary with regard to the food and its preparation or the chemical qualities of the objects.

Proust, on the other hand, shows one thing above all: how enjoying food can lead to a similarly deep aesthetic experience as looking at a painting or the sound of a piece of music. In the end, in “In Search of Lost Time” there is also a plea for conscious eating, indulging in the associations of taste and seeing where they take you. Even if it's just grandma's garden.