The Perfect Egg

A witty and erudite little book about the joys of food, with line drawings by New Yorker artist Saul Steinberg.

"The writer who never talks about eating, about appetite, hunger, food, about cooks and meals, arouses my suspicion, as though some vital element were missing in him." Scholarly, playful, idiosyncratic, and witty, Aldo Buzzi's The Perfect Egg is an excursion into the food that has obsessed, provoked, and intrigued the author through his life. A book of genial and highly refined chat, enriched with personal anecdotes, recipes, and quotations from literature and history, it is a tribute to the profound pleasures of food. Along the way, the reader discovers recipes from Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and the United States, related by Buzzi in a tone that is casual but delightfully attentive to detail. He writes about how to make lime soup, what goes into an olla podrida, varieties of futurist cuisine, the difference between edible and inedible pigeons, and the emotional resonance of overcooked pasta. And, of course, he reveals how to cook the perfect egg.