M. F. K. Fisher

The Art of Eating

I have found that most bachelors like the exotic, at least, culinary speaking: they would rather fuss around with a complex recipe for Le Hochepot de Queue de Bœuf than a simple one called Stewed Oxtail, even if both come from Andre Simon's Concise Encyclopedia of Gastronomy... The drink is good. He pops discretely in and out of his gastronomical workshop, where he brews his sly receipts, his digestive attacks upon the fortress of her virtue. She represses her natural curiosity, and she is at all experienced in such wars, she knows fairly well that she will have a patterned meal which has already been indicated by his ordering in restaurants. More often than not it will be some kind of chicken, elaborately disguised with everything from Australian pine-nuts to herbs grown by the landlady's daughter.