Consider the Oyster

'Her writing makes your mouth water.' -- Financial Times

'Fisher created a cultural legacy that spreads far beyond oysters.' -- Ruby Tandoh, VICE

'An oyster leads a dreadful but exciting life.'

The celebrated American food writer M. F. K. Fisher pays tribute to that most delicate and enigmatic of foods: the oyster. She tells of oysters found in stews and soups, roasted, baked, fried, prepared à la Rockefeller or au naturel – and of the pearls sometimes found therein.

As she describes each dish, Fisher recalls her own initiation into the 'strange cold succulence' of raw oysters as a young woman in Marseille and Dijon, and explores both the bivalve's famed aphrodisiac properties and its equally notorious gut-wrenching powers.

Plumbing the 'dreadful but exciting' life of the oyster, Fisher invites readers to share in the comforts and delights that this delicate edible evokes, and enchants us along the way with her characteristically wise and witty prose.

'Her fans include Yotam Ottolenghi, Ruth Reichl, and Bee Wilson. Her voice finds an echo in the writings of Nigella Lawson, Samin Nosrat and more.' -- Ruby Tandoh, VICE

'Many authors whisper, as though to a diary, or chat, as though to a friend, but Fisher communicates with the heady directness of a lover.' -- Bee Wilson, author of The Way We Eat Now

'She is not just a great a great food writer. She is a great writer, full stop.' -- Rachel Cooke, Observer

'The greatest food writer who has ever lived.' -- Simon Schama

'Poet of the appetites.' -- John Updike



Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher (1908-1992) was one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century. She is the author of 27 books of food, travel and memoir, many of which have become classics. Her books include Serve it Forth, Consider the Oyster, How to Cook a Wolf, The Gastronomical Me, Map of Another Town, With Bold Knife and Fork, and a novel, The Theoretical Foot.