by A. J. Liebling (Penguin Modern Classics, ISBN 9780241637975) penguin.co.uk
The US journalist AJ Liebling was an Olympian eater. He could have had a successful career as an ASMR-style videoblogger: his. Instead, in 1926, he did as other wealthy and hungry Americans did, and travelled to Paris for a year of gastronomic study. Good taste in food required two things: greed and a budget. Limited by a stipend from his father, the young Liebling learnt to weigh up the merits of, say, a perfectly good beef heart eaten with a bottle of superior wine, against the pleasures of a sirloin steak served with a bottle of mere . He developed new particularities of taste in later years after gaining a more expendable income as a war journalist. Bread alongside , for example, was now ‘a diluent, not an added magnificence’, and should be avoided in favour of a well-executed pilaf.
