The back of the book says: From a passionate and talented chef who also happens to be an Episcopalian priest comes this surprising and thought-provoking treatise on everything from prayer to poetry to puff pastry. In The Supper of the Lamb, Capon talks about festal and ferial cooking, emerging as an inspirational voice extolling the benefits and wonders of old-fashioned home cooking in a world of fast food and prepackaged cuisine.
It was first published in 1969 and has been republished several times, most recently in the Modern Library Food series, edited by the inimitable Ruth Reichl.
There are dozens of things to love about the book Supper of the Lamb by Robert Capon. It’s humorous, convicting, encouraging, delightful, and useful just to name a few. You can’t do much better than that! Here are some particularly food-y passages I enjoyed, but I definitely recommend you read the whole thing.
To be sure, food keeps us alive, but that is only its smallest and most temporary work. Its eternal purpose is to furnish our sensibilities against the day when we shall sit down at the heavenly banquet and see how gracious the Lord is. Nourishment is necessary only for a while; what we shall need forever is taste.
Robert Capon, The Supper of the Lamb p40
What then? Is there anything between the glitteringly general and the exhaustingly particular that will serve to sharpen your eye for variety and your taste for distinctions—to quicken your appreciation of the poetry that has been made out of meat? Ah, yes. There is the category of the minutely and shimmeringly specific, of the little things which make great differences—of the graces and ornaments that separate the cooks from the scullery maids. Three things there are which the earth cannot bear, yea, four which are to be feared as the shadow of death: A painter who will not look, a sculptor with a dead thumb, a musician with a tin ear, and a cook with a wooden palate. Let Ithiel therefore listen.
Robert Capon, The Supper of the Lamb p41
Admittedly, the Scriptures begin and end with water. There is a river in Eden, and there is a river in the Heavenly Jerusalem: All life comes from the sea. Equally certainly, without water, no life is possible in between. No man can praise it enough. It is the root of freshness, the sign of purity, the means of grace. Most of all, it is the element that makes earth Earth, the principal ornament of the round world, the blue mantle of what must be a stunning planet indeed.
Robert Capon, The Supper of the Lamb p68
But for all that, plain water is not the world’s best gift to a stew. What is needed in cooking is living water, water elated to new eminences, water transformed into stock.
Do you see what that means? In a general way we concede that God made the world out of joy: He didn’t need it; He just thought it was a good thing. But if you confine His activity in creation to the beginning only, you lose most of the joy in the subsequent shuffle of history. Sure, it was good back then, you say, but since then, we’ve been eating leftovers. How much better a world it becomes when you see Him creating at all times and at every time; when you see that the preserving of the old in being is just as much creation as the bringing of the new out of nothing. Each thing, at every moment, becomes the delight of His hand, the apple of His eye. The bloom of yeast lies upon the grapeskins year after year because He likes it; C6H12O6 → 2C2H5OH + 2CO2 is a dependable process because, every September, He says, That was nice; do it again.
Robert Capon, The Supper of the Lamb p85
Let us pause and drink to that.
[I]f he is a secularist, he insists that God must have no part in the world at all. That God has made Saccharomyces ellipsoideus competent enough to ferment sugar on its own, becomes, for him, a proof that He never made it at all. Poor man! To be so nearly right, and so devastatingly wrong! To hit so close, yet miss the mark completely. Yeast, without God to give it as a gift, ceases to be good company. It becomes merely useful—a mechanism contributory to other mechanisms. And those, in turn, to the vast mechanism of the whole. And that, at last, to—well, he is hard put to say just what. He has found the sewing machine and lost the thread of delight. Unique goodnesses are swallowed up in process.
Robert Capon, The Supper of the Lamb p87
In this veil of sorrows, we should be careful about allowing abundance to con us out of hunger. It is not only the best sauce; it is also the choicest daily reminder that the agony of the world is by no means over. As long as the passion goes on, we are called to share it as we can—especially if, by the mere luck of the draw, we have escaped the worst pains of it. Do all you can to help, of course; but don’t, for all that, forget that you are also called simply to bear. In the end the agony lies too deep for any cure except the cross. Fast, therefore, until His Passion brings the world home free. He works through any crosses He can find. In a time of affluence, fasting may well be the simplest one of all.
Robert Capon, The Supper of the Lamb p145
If I had only a single temporal blessing to wish you, I would not hesitate a moment: May you be spared long enough to know at least one long evening of old friends, dark bread, good wine, and strong cheese. If even exile be so full, what must not our fullness be?
Robert Capon, The Supper of the Lamb p148
Knead well. It perfects the texture of the bread, and, more important, it is good for your soul. There are a few actions you will ever take that have more of the stuff of history in them. A woman with her sleeves rolled up and flour on her hands is one of the most gorgeous stabilities in the world. Don’t let your family miss the sight.
Robert Capon, The Supper of the Lamb p153
We are great, my friend; we shall not be saved for trampling that greatness under foot. Ecce tu pulcher es, dilecte mi, et decorus. Lectulus noster floridus. Tigna domorum nostrarum cedrina, laquearia nostra cypressina. Ecce iste venit, saliens in montibus, transilens colles. Come then; leap upon these mountains, skip upon these hills and heights of earth. The road to Heaven does not run from the world but through it. The longest Session of all is no discontinuation of these sessions here, but a lifting of them all by priestly love. It is a place for men, not ghosts—for the risen gorgeousness of the New Earth and for the glorious earthiness of the True Jerusalem.
Robert Capon, The Supper of the Lamb p180
Eat well then. Between our love and His Priesthood, He makes all things new. Our last Home will be home indeed.