The Tenth Muse by Judith Jones

Author:Judith Jones
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Autobiography
ISBN: 9780307277442
Publisher: Anchor
Published: 2007-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

8

What Is Taste?

In the late sixties, we suddenly found ourselves the guardians of two children, Chris and Audrey Vandercook, then thirteen and eleven years old. Their parents, who never had much time for family life, had tended to leave the children’s upbringing to Giggy, their housekeeper. Giggy wanted to make the little ones feel loved, so she fed them whatever they wanted. And what they wanted amounted to about three things: hamburgers, chicken, and chocolate cake. Now and then Giggy would take them home with her, and they would be part of her loving family at birthday parties and special occasions. So they had at least sampled some home-cooked African-American food, such as ribs and cornbread. But their daily fare was limited, to say the least.

When we made the commitment, their mother had died and their father was terminally ill, so the children soon came to live with us. We looked forward to a happy family table where we could talk and get to know each other better. But we had to establish some ground rules. We explained that we loved food, and that we were given to experimenting with new ingredients and testing out ideas. So they would have to put up with it and not complain, just enjoy. And they did well, pushing aside only those things they really couldn’t stomach.

Chris was the more wary, and he had a unique way of scraping the food off his fork with his teeth, oh so carefully, trying to avoid letting it touch his mouth, and we knew what he was telling us: I can eat it, but I don’t have to taste it. Some months after we’d all been together, I put down bowls of a savory stewed dish, and I watched with some trepidation as he took his first bite. This time he could not refrain from comment. “May I ask what I just ate?” he inquired, not really wanting to know. We explained that this was a classic dish from Lyon, France, that was made with, well, tripe—that is, the lining of a cow’s stomach. He put his hand to his mouth, left the table, and ran down the hall, trying to make it to the bathroom on time.

To compensate for our insensitivity, I offered to make a beautiful French chocolate cake. Chris loved chocolate cake and could devour a substantial one made from a Duncan Hines mix, which Giggy always used, in less than two days. When I presented the Reine de Saba, which I made carefully following Julia’s favorite cake recipe and using only the best chocolate, it was dense and rather flat-looking compared with an American cake that rises to impressive heights by the power of baking powder. I did not hear any yums of pleasure when Chris took his first bite. In fact, the queen of French cakes sat around for almost a week with only perfunctory nibbles taken out of it (his weekly chocolate fix augmented, I suspect, by Mars Bars).

Years later, when

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