On Food and Cooking

The everyday alchemy of creating food for the
body and the mind. This 17th century woodcut
compares the alchemical (“chymick”) work of
the bee and the scholar, who transform
nature’s raw materials into honey and
knowledge. Whenever we cook we become
practical chemists, drawing on the
accumulated knowledge of generations, and
transforming what the Earth offers us into
more concentrated forms of pleasure and
nourishment. (The first Latin caption reads
“Thus we bees make honey, not for
ourselves”; the second, “All things in books,”
the library being the scholar’s hive. Woodcut
from the collection of the International Bee
Research Association.)