Poison was Agatha Christie’s preferred method of dispatch by far – having been a dispensing chemist she knew a lot about it. In her 1930 classic Strong Poison, Dorothy L Sayers had her heroine Harriet Vane stand trial for poisoning her ex-lover with a sweet omelette. Crime writing has had a long – and body-strewn – affair with food.įor of course, as the great 19th-century food chemist Frederick Accum wrote, sometimes “there is death in the pot”. Even the no-nonsense Sam Spade slid into a booth at San Francisco’s famous John’s Grill in The Maltese Falcon to order his lamb chops, baked potato and sliced tomato. Detective Van der Valk (the creation of the almost forgotten former chef Nicolas Freeling) ate his salt herring “the way the Dutch do, holding it up above his mouth like a seal in the zoo”. American mystery writer Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe weighed “a seventh of a ton”, and employed a Swiss chef called Fritz who made him “Shad roe mousse Pocahontas” and “Avocado Todhunter” (a rather anaemic combination of avocado, watercress, lemon and crushed ice). Inspector Maigret would make a detour for skate wings with black butter, mussels in cream and choucroute. Holmes himself was partial to curried chicken and mixed his own blend of earl grey and lapsang souchong. I n “The Noble Bachelor” Sherlock Holmes presents Watson with a brace of woodcock and a pâté de foie gras pie.

The long quiche goodbye