Hosting

So, I’ve have been rooting around in Horace’s Epistles, which are full of amusing things. They really are not “epistles” in the conventional sense, since they were make-believe letters, artfully wrought jebux d’esprit that employ the convention of addressing a friend in order to entertain not (or not only) that friend (who may or may not exist) but one’s readers. Horace wrote two books of Epistles, one circa 21 BC when he was in his early forties, one a decade later, a few years before his death in 8 BC at the (it seems now) tender age of fifty-six. One that caught my eye when sitting down to write this column was Epistle 1.

If you dare to host a dinner party, said Brillat-Savarin, you must be prepared to be responsible for your guests’ entire happiness while they are under your roof. It’s not just the victuals you are serving. It’s an entire world. I got that sage bit of advice from the French doctor and food writer Édouard de Pomiane (1875-1964), one of the most engaging writers about the preparation and enjoyment of pain quotidien I know. At least two books by Pomiane have been translated into English, Cooking with Pomiane and French Cooking in Ten Minutes (yes, really). Neither replaces Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking or similar nitty-gritty manuals, but both are atmospheric charmers, books that can be read as well as consulted.