M.F.K. Fisher - the gilded fork™ (2025)

11 Jan M.F.K. Fisher

Posted at 18:41hin Kitchen SinkbyJennifer Iannolo

When I feel a wave of malaise stemming from the quickie/pre-made/who-cares approach to food that is like a pox on our culture, it often soothes me to find a haven in the words of my favorite gastronomic writers. When I’m feeling profoundly disenchanted, I head straight for my volumes of M.F.K. Fisher.

The Grande Dame of food writing has some of the most eloquent prose ever put to paper; her skill as a wordsmith is inspiring on its own, but her abundant passion for food, serving as its catalyst, makes the reading deliciously palatable. A passage can be written on the simplest of things — scrambled eggs, for example — and one can get lost in the moment with her, imagining the delicate, velvety texture of this perfect dish:

This concoction is…a placid one, never to be attempted by a nervous, harried woman, one anxious to slap something on the table and get it over with. Its very consistency, slow and creamy, is a deterrent to irritation…I love this recipe, for its very gentleness, and for the demands it makes upon one’s patience, and the homage it deserves from its slow tasting (The Art of Eating, “An Alphabet for Gourmets,” 1990, p.717).

Breakfast was never so decadent.

Her appreciation for the simplest ingredients, and for the pleasure of cooking itself, is a balm for a weary spirit; one can easily sense the reverence with which she approaches her subject — almost as a lover. And yet she eschews a Hedonistic approach to food, recognizing that such wanton lust does not benefit man in the end. Instead, she focuses on La Rochefoucauld’s emphasis that “To eat is a necessity, but to eat intelligently is an art”:

We sink too easily into stupid and over-fed sensuality, our bodies thickening even more quickly than our minds…forgetting that Epicurus himself employed the same adjective as La Rochefoucauld [“intelligent”] when he advocated our finding an agreeable use for our faculties in “the intelligent enjoyment of the pleasures of the table” (“Serve It Forth,” p.9).

Just like Brillat-Savarin who preceded her, Fisher understood the true essence of gourmandism; that she was chosen to translate his work is of no surprise, for they are soulmates in spirit. She considered The Physiology of Taste to be “as close to perfection as we yet know it, and a constant wonder.” One might say the same about her body of work.

What is perhaps most captivating, however, is her approach to sensuality. In describing those who enjoy cuisine at a purely superficial level, seeking out aphrodisiacs, meals to seduce, and their counterparts, she takes such individuals to task:

No matter what shrewd compound from an old whore’s cookery book might be produced for them, for their likes in any walks of life; no matter what revivifying wine or tonic water could be poured for them, in the end, what spiced essences they spilled upon themselves in the hope of future flames, it would be futile if there was no hunger or lust stronger than their physical ennui, their worldly exhaustion. Something beyond gastronomical boundaries must then take over: the pharmacopoeia of passion (“An Alphabet for Gourmets,” p. 711).

In other words, it’s the person, not the ingredient. Cardamom alone will not turn you into a lusty beast, at least not one whose lust is anything more than surface-level. Upon discovering this passage, my own soul began to sing — here was someone who understood philosophy, and the importance of integration between the mind and senses. In reminiscing about tasting various wines, and wondering whether they were “drunk correctly” or not, she says, “Nobody knew it except my own exhilarated senses and my pleased mind, all of which must enter into any true gastronomic experience” (“Consider the Oyster,” p. 179).

How is it that from Fisher’s time to now, such important words seem to have been forgotten in most circles outside of academia and professional kitchens? (And even then they are sometimes absent.) After all that has been written and spoken by Brillat-Savarin, Fisher, and Julia Child, where have the food philosophers gone? And why haven’t more people from the mainstream embraced what they’ve said with fervor? The existence of which they speak offers grand pleasures on earth, and a life in three dimensions, where the richness of living is celebrated with each passing moment.

The simple answer is that our culture, by and large, wants what’s “hot,” what’s “in” — the quick thrill, the sound-bite. Sensuality has been replaced by “food porn.” These efforts are audaciously mislabeled as sensual, when they are really no better than B-grade pornography; lots of action, little substance. Forget about plot.

In keeping with this cultural theme, the recent Fisher biography, Poet of the Appetites: The Lives and Loves of MFK Fisher, attempts to tear her from the mythic pedestal of sensual goddess, revealing the secrets of her “dark” side, libertinism, and sexual history, providing a tabloid-esque thrill for our celebrity-infested culture. Author Joan Reardon asserts that Fisher embellished details about her career, and was a brittle, sometimes cruel woman. Her lifestyle is taken to task with an approach that echoes Puritanism, better known as “the American way.” I wonder if Reardon has taken notice of the irony inherent in all of that.

It would be much more productive for the student of gastronomy to focus on Fisher’s own words instead, for even if she were a difficult character to deal with face-to-face (and I believe such things could be attributed to personality quirks rather than moral defects), such sordid details in no way detract from the impact of her work: gorgeous, philosophically profound prose. It is the meaning behind them which should be studied; to do any less would be a grave disservice to the gastronome who brought us the medium of food writing as an art in itself.

The problem, however — and the more complex answer to this cultural quagmire — is philosophical. Perhaps because the deeper implications of MFK Fisher’s words cut too deeply, it is far safer to ignore them and instead attack her person. Such convenient ad hominem attacks are most deftly used in our culture to deflect argument; and the analysis of the roots of that, dear readers, goes far beyond the scope of an article.