Benji’s Reviews > The Hungry Eye: Eating, Drinking, and European Culture from Rome to the Renaissance > Status Update

The serpent did not choose to lure Eve with Vitamin C, of which an apple provides 14 percent of our daily requirements; the pleasure principle can never be left out of the equation.

Q: What to do if quarrels break out during your dinner party?
A: Send in the clowns, and if your guests speak different languages, hire pantomiming clowns.

We moderns speak in terms of Vitis vinifera as a single species, and we analyze the chemical properties of wine such that a glass of Château Pétrus and a glass of plonk turn out to be something like 93 percent identical. God is in the 7 percent.