THE ARTFUL EATER: A Gourmet Investigates the...

THE ARTFUL EATER: A Gourmet Investigates the Ingredients of Great Food by Edward Behr (Atlantic Monthly Press: $10; 272 pp., illustrated, paperback original). In this entertaining collection of columns from his quarterly newsletter “The Art of Eating,” Behr writes about the origins of common foods and the special pleasures certain varieties afford. He reveals that carrots were originally purple and have been hybridized to produce the familiar orange color (the red faded unpleasantly during cooking). He praises the subtle flavors of genuine country ham, the heavy cream from a Vermont dairy and even common table salt. Behr’s staunch commitment to the notion that food should be enjoyed offers a welcome respite from the combination chemistry lesson and ritual mortification of the flesh contemporary dining often seems to have become.