SOURCE: O'Brien, John. “At Montaigne's Table.” French Studies 54, no. 1 (January 2000): 1-16.

In the following essay, O'Brien discusses Montaigne's detailed accounts of his food preferences and dietary habits in “De l'experience.”

At one point in his last essay, ‘De l'experience’, Montaigne pauses to tell us about his table habits: he prefers salt beef, unsalted bread, has no particular taste for pastries and dainties nor for salads and fruits except melons, and he likes sauces and fish.¹ It is an episode which in recent years has proved popular with the critics, perhaps surprisingly so in view of the seemingly anecdotal evidence and confidences it offers. Critics who focus on these pages even emphasize their intractability: ‘pour ce qui est de leur valeur signifiante, les salades et les melons de Montaigne ont tout l'air d'être nettement irrécupérables’, wrote Jules Brody by way of a preface to an impressive...