More than a meal: How food shapes and drives the stories we love

In feel-good fiction, food is often used to establish mood and setting, adding warmth and comfort to the pages. Laurie Gilmore’s Dream Harbour series, including The Pumpkin Spice Café and The Cinnamon Bun Bookstore, offers readers a delicious escape into cosy small-town life. Sweet treats like cinnamon buns and pumpkin lattes are more than snacks adorning the counter, and instead symbolise friendship, belonging, and the warmth of small town life. These edible details help to create a setting where readers can feel immediately at home. As Gilmore writes, “Because what more did one need besides good friends, good books, and the occasional cinnamon bun?”

In other stories, food carries historical or cultural weight, offering subtle context without the need for exposition. In The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, the now-famous potato peel pie is more than just a quirky title. It reflects the scarcity of ingredients in wartime Guernsey, where meals had to be creatively assembled from scraps. The dish itself hints at the social and political landscape of the time – a period marked by hardship, resourcefulness, and community resilience. Through a humble pie, readers gain insight into a particular moment in history.

And sometimes, food is far from being part of the backdrop, and instead is key to the plot. In Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, young Rose Edelstein discovers she can taste people’s emotions through the food they prepare – for instance, a bite of her mother’s lemon cake reveals deep emotional sadness hidden beneath a cheerful exterior. Rose’s unusual gift turns everyday meals into moments of emotional revelation, using food as a way to explore the unspoken complexities of family life. Here, food is not just symbolic; it’s the very thing that propels the story forward.

A recent standout that brings all these elements together is Butter by Asako Yuzuki. Translated from Japanese, this bestseller follows Rika, a journalist pursuing a high-profile story about Manako Kajii, a woman convicted of murdering wealthy men after seducing them with gourmet cooking. To understand her subject, Rika begins preparing recipes from Kajii’s once-popular food blog and finds herself drawn into the sensuality and comfort of cooking and eating. As Rika goes to great lengths to collect ingredients for the recipes, her connection to Kajii deepens, raising concerns among friends and colleagues about the connection – and Rika’s growing size. Through rich descriptions of food and its impact, Butter explores societal expectations around women’s bodies and the freedom that can come from embracing appetite, both literal and metaphorical. Food here is mood, context, and plot all at once, allowing for a deep exploration of control, desire, and identity.

So it’s clear; whether it’s setting a cosy tone, offering historical insight, or unlocking secrets hidden within characters, food in fiction is far more than just flavour. So as we tuck into the Big Tasty Read in the coming weeks and months, it’s worth paying attention to what’s on the fictional menu. Browse The Reading Agency’s recommendations (and ours) and fill your plate with tasty reads to inspire, inform and satiate your appetite for fiction.

Bethany is a Communications and Marketing Assistant, working on reading and libraries at Inspire.

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