OF A GOLDEN AGE

(Longest Cannonball post title to date? Methinks yes.)

My parents know I’m obsessed with food, and to that end my mom gave me Erica Bauermeister’s novel The School of Essential Ingredients. It is newer than the Jane Austen Book Club and follows a very similar format: A small group of overlapping characters share a common event, in this case a cooking class. They have a leader, though, and she works in place of the omniscient narrator, guiding characters toward one another, directing their parallel lives into intersecting ones. The relationships described in the book’s course, or forged in its course, are satisfying enough.

But the real star of this show is the food — luxurious, emotionally loaded descriptions of fresh ingredients and the fragrant experience of cooking. Bauermeister brings her A-game and slathers it on thick. If you love food you will love this food; if you love this food you will love the characters she draws to interact with it. More than that, Bauermeister builds a great deal of legitimate food information into the book, along with a healthy and slightly laissez-faire attitude toward cooking. Because yes, baking is a series of ratios and requires scientific precision, although it can still be filled with love and adaptation and creativity. And no, building a fresh tomato sauce is not the same slave to process.

For more on the Cannonball Read, see Pajiba.

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