Introduction: All the essays in this book- but only a handful of the recipes- have appeared during the past few years (keep in mind this was written in 1970) in substantially different forms in McCall"s and Holiday Magazines. My intent then was to explore in depth various categories of foods, some familiar and others only vaguiely known, if at all. I was concerned at that time not with recipes as such but with the foods themselves: their chemistry and composition, how to find and recognize them, how to buy and assess their qualities and, finally, how to cook with them. After each essay appeared I received countless letters, almost all of them requests for specific recipes for the unusual -and even the better-known -- dishes I had either mentioned in passing or had discussed in general terms.