On Food and Cooking

Acknowledgments

Along with many food writers today, I feel a
great debt of gratitude to Alan Davidson for
the way he brought new substance, scope, and
playfulness to our subject. On top of that, it
was Alan who informed me that I would have
to revise On Food and Cooking — before I’d
even held the first copy in my hands! At our
first meeting in 1984, over lunch, he asked me
what the book had to say about fish. I told him
that I mentioned fish in passing as one form
of animal muscle and thus of meat. And so
this great fish enthusiast and renowned
authority on the creatures of several seas
gently suggested that, in view of the fact that
fish are diverse creatures and their flesh very
unlike meat, they really deserve special and
extended attention. Well, yes, they really do.