Auguste And Delphine Quotes

“Close your eyes," he had said to her. "Food demands complete submission." And then he placed a perfect scallop in her mouth. "Do you taste the sea?"
Delphine did. Not just the salt of the sea but the very air of the moment that the shell was pulled from the sand. "A storm, perhaps. There is a dark edge to the sweetness of the meat.”
― N.M. Kelby, White Truffles in Winter

“Do you remember the mangoes?" she asked. She thought she was whispering but the scratching of the pen nib stopped. "You must remember them."
She could hear him push the chair away from his desk, slowly stand and then lean against the wall. The floorboards creaked.
"The mangoes?" she asked again.
She could hear him breathing. He cleared his throat and then, quietly, said, "They were sweet, were they not?"
"It was a sweetness more intense than anything I have ever known."
And then the room fell quiet. The two sat listening to the familiar sound of each other's breath. Without words, there was comfort: a sonata, tone poem of silence and knowing.
After a time, Escoffier said, "The Hindus believe that mangoes are a true sign that perfection is attainable."
She thought of the mangoes with their smooth marbled skin, the carmine and field grass green of them, and then the flesh itself, that vivid orange, and then, each bite, the juice sliding down her arm.”
― N.M. Kelby, White Truffles in Winter

“Madame Escoffier," he said. In his white apron, he was again the man she loved. The gentle man who only spoke in whispers.
"I am sorry," she said.
"I am not."
He leaned over and kissed her. His lips tasted of tomatoes, sharp and floral.
The moment, filled with the heat of a reckless summer, brought her back to the gardens they had grown together in Paris in a private courtyard behind Le Petit Moulin Rouge. Sweet Roma tomatoes, grassy licorice tarragon, thin purple eggplants and small crisp beans thrived in a series of old wine barrels that sat in the tiny square. There were also violets and roses that the 'confiseur' would make into jellies or sugar to grace the top of the 'petit-fours glacés,' which were baked every evening while the coal of the brick ovens cooled down for the night.
"No one grows vegetables in the city of Paris," she said, laughing, when Escoffier first showed her his hidden garden, "except for Escoffier."
He picked a ripe tomato, bit into it and then held it to her lips. "Pomme d'amour, perhaps this was fruit of Eden."
The tomato was so ripe and lush, so filled with heat it brought tears to her eyes and he kissed her.
"You are becoming very good at being a chef's wife."
"I love you," she said and finally meant it.
'Pommes d'amour.' The kitchen was now overflowing with them.”
― N.M. Kelby, White Truffles in Winter