The Decadent Cookbook

Book excerpt: The Decadent Cookbook is not another installment in the seemingly-serialized publication of prosaic cookbooks written by "celebrity chefs," but rather an accessible guide for people with an interest in history, a sense of humor, and a penchant for the unconventional. This is not the hundredth book on Provenal cuisine nor is it the seven hundredth book about Italian dining. Through their own irreverent narrative and selections from the works of others perhaps more wicked, Lucan & Gray take us along on a whirlwind journey -- steeped in myth, mystery, and misadventure -- through the culinary ages while reflecting on the gastronomical quirks, conceits, strange tastes and peculiar table-side manners of the periods' most outrageous figures. Sure the authors recommend blood, exotic meat (the aye-aye), strange herbs (samphire), and butter statues, but the real shock may be that these guys are serious. At times useful, at other times surreal, The Decadent Cookbook combines a scholarly temperament with a whimsical passion for the delicious: "Blood makes an excellent basis for a Decadent meal. Dark, heavy, rich and sinister, it combines beautifully with other Decadent themes: vice, corruption, incest and death." Definitely not your grandmother's cookbook. The Decadent Cookbook is a guide for the adventurous, the versatile, and frankly, the courageous. From the tables of ancient Rome (Stuffed Sow's Womb) to the kitchenettes of Victorian England (A Victorian Sausage) this cookbook is a testament to baroque living, and, if you can find "a heifer's udder" to go with your Andouillettes, practical dining.