Delights and Prejudices was published by Atheneum in 1964, and it is Beard’s most personal book — a culinary autobiography that traces his education in food from childhood to maturity. The “delights” are the great meals, the perfect ingredients, the moments of gastronomic revelation; the “prejudices” are the strong opinions about food that a lifetime of eating and cooking inevitably produces.
Beard’s food education began in Portland, Oregon, where his mother ran a small residential hotel and cooked with the extraordinary ingredients available in the Pacific Northwest: Dungeness crab, Columbia River salmon, wild mushrooms, and the berries, fruits, and vegetables of a mild climate and rich volcanic soil. The childhood chapters are among the most evocative food writing in English — Beard remembers specific meals with a sensory precision that makes the reader taste what he tasted.
The book follows Beard to New York, to Europe, to his travels across America, recording the meals and the people who shaped his understanding of food. His portraits of other food figures — from his mother (his first and most important teacher) to the chefs, shopkeepers, farmers, and home cooks who taught him — are generous, specific, and frequently hilarious. The book belongs to the tradition of gastronomic autobiography that includes M.F.K. Fisher and Elizabeth David.
Collecting Delights and Prejudices
First edition (Atheneum, New York, 1964): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $25–$80
- Without jacket: $8–$20
- Signed copies: $50–$150